Progress always gives us more and more of everything faster and faster . There are only so many details that can be comfortably managed in anybody’s life. Once this number has been exceeded, one of two things happens: disorganization or frustration. Yet progress gives us more and more details every year—often at exponential rates. We have to deal with more “things per person” than ever before in the history of humankind. Every year we have more products, more information, more technology, more activities, more choices, more change, more traffic, more commitments, more work. In short, more of everything. Faster.... Progress automatically leads to increasing overload, meaninglessness, speed, change, stress, and complexity.
Richard A. Swenson, The Overload Syndrome (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1998), pp. 43-44; emphasis in the original.
The more we watch the lives of men, the more we see that one of the reasons why men are not occupied with great thoughts and interests is the way in which their lives are overfilled with little things ”
quoted by William Philip in a January 2003 newsletter from The Proclamation Trust in London.
This is so true! I believe that so many of our problems today can be atrributed to "overload." It is hard to get out from under it, though. I have come to greatly respect people who are thoughtful, not meaning "polite thoughtful," although I like those people, :) but meaning "takes time to think deeply" thoughtful.
ReplyDeletePeggy - we have a man in our church who is one of those "thoughtful thinkers" that you mention. EVERYONE respects him and listens to what he says. That should encourage the rest of us to do more listening, more thinking, and quite a bit less talking. (Saying this on my blog, which features a lot of blabbing is probably a bit self-contradictory.)
ReplyDeleteIt is a conundrum. A busy life leaves little time for study, thinking and reflection, yet we all want to be busy about our Father's work and serving the Lord. I believe I will commit this situation to prayer and see what God would have me do. It sure seems hard to do both! Perhaps it is a seasons of life issue. Sometimes we are busy bringing in the sheaves and other times we have time to ponder important issues and ideas.
ReplyDeleteVery wise, Peggy. If you'd like to live vicariously through someone who took the time to smell the roses, read Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
ReplyDeleteIf you have never read this, let me whet your appetite with a quote: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Have you received your copy of The Imitation of Christ yet?
Richard, I have only read snippets of "Walden." Perhaps when it is my season to read and study I will return to it. I am eagerly awaiting my copy of "Imitation." It will be a few more days because I ordered it from a used book site. I am hoping that it will be my next throughtful reading. Right now I am reading "Christian's Secret of a Happy Life" by Hannah Whitall Smith. It is slow going and takes some concentration to absorb it, but I like it. I appreciate your site because you post on thought-provoking matters.
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