On Sham Wows and Tofu

The business of this world is busyness. Our society works hard to sell us the notion that “busy is best”—after all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop, right?  By the time we are old enough to watch, listen, and order infomercial products using our parents’ credit cards, we have bought into the idea that there is no price too high for some good, ol’ fashioned distraction (especially if that distraction happens to be a Sham Wow or Slap Chop for the bargain price of only $19.99 plus shipping and handling!)

Like many ambitious young Americans, I learned to master the art of busyness at an early age. School, hobbies, extracurricular activities – they filled my schedule and gave me a sense of purpose. If they also left me feeling a little exhausted and confused, that’s just proof I was fulfilling my patriotic duty! And I couldn't slow down, not while thousands of kids just like me were brandishing forks and lining up to take their piece of the pie.

At least that’s what I thought.  

The reality - or at least the reality that I've come to accept - is that sometimes we don’t need busyness. Sometimes we need quiet. Our fast-paced society generally equates stillness with laziness, silence with apathy. However, the opposite is often true. Physiologically, mentally and emotionally, we need quiet. We need the opportunity to relax our bodies. We need the opportunity to rest our minds. We need the opportunity to recharge our spirits.

So if quiet is so essential to our well-being, why are most of us afraid of solitude? Maybe because there’s a certain vulnerability in being silent. We have no entanglements to use as armor, no other voices to drown out the often uncomfortable truth. Silence shows us the truth, or at least an arrow pointing to the truth. Once we see the arrow, we can allow truth to transform our lives or we can try to pretend that it doesn't exist. Either way, we can’t go back to the way things were before.

In playing the pretending game, I've learned that the world outside us is only a reflection of the world inside us. We see the world as we are. If we choose not to face our issues and insecurities, they will continue to manifest themselves in new ways. Unless I can learn to slow down, take time to really look at myself, and accept what I see, I will continue to clutter my life with busyness. I will always be looking for other people or things to make me feel whole, and I will always be disappointed because the solution does not lie with them.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all of the answers. I wish I could say that I had this magical revelation and instantly learned to change everything negative about myself. (If that were true, I’d be selling “The Spiritual Sham Wow” on your local infomercial network and making beaucoup bucks.) Alas, real transformation takes time. But I’m working on it. I’m learning. Some days I have to constantly remind myself that it’s okay to be who I am, and other days I don’t even care about sitting at the cool kids’ table. They’re probably eating tofu there anyway.