The Disease of Being Busy.

Part of the reason I haven't been posting on my blog lately is because for some reason...I have gotten it into my head that I have to have some profound thought for everyone to relate too, to consider or to agree/disagree with. It has caused me writers block (in blog form) and it is extremely frustrating considering the amount of thoughts that circulate in my head through out the day. Thoughts that I would love to share, but don't think I can (in written form) because I can't formulate them into a "proper" or "correct" structure that is coherent for people to read. 

I am going to let go of this expectation (which I have been putting on myself) and just write...

Recently, I have been trying to get a group of people together (once a month on the full moon) for a guided ten-minute meditation and a time to check-in with one another. To have a space that people can actively listen to one-another and connect. 

The idea of the monthly group came into fruition because of 1. loneliness that ironically comes with being surrounded by 8.4 million people and 2. this article I recently read called "the Disease of Being Busy." 

In the article it talks about how in the English language when a person asks "how are you" it has become, in a sense...meaningless. We don't answer the question with the mindset that the person asking us actually wants to listen... while on the other end...we ask the question thinking that the person will have a quick, immediate response. 

Alternatively, in many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask a person how they're doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayk haal-ik? or in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal? 

"Haal is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?”

This article comes to my mind almost every day. This is what I want to know about people I interact with.
I don't want to know how many emails are in your inbox, how busy you have been at work, what tasks you have to do later, that you may or may not be looking forward too... I want to know how your heart is doing. I want to know how YOU are doing, not WHAT you are doing. 

We get so caught up in our day-to-day to-do's, schedules, appointments, etc...that we lose touch with people's hearts (and our own). It is like we unconsciously put up a heavy shell around us that works like armor to cut us off from other people and the outside world. I am of no exception to this. Even when we are actually physically with people, we have become accustomed to this new way of being "alone together," mostly due to modern technology. We can be sitting with our closest friends, our family...people that we love and also be elsewhere, connected to wherever we "want to be."

These monthly gatherings were my attempt to feel a deeper connection with people (people whom I know and whom I don't know) and to feel a sense of total presence that I oftentimes feel I (amongst others) lose sight of. 

We have lost a sense of the human connection by being "busy..." (hence the disease of it). 

Maybe tomorrow...or the next day, you could ask someone, "How is your haal?"