Mental Busyness

A wise woman once cautioned my teenage self to be careful to not allow “things to do, places to go, people to see” to crowd out the time needed for rest, mental processing, and creativity. I can’t help but think that, had she lived to see the screeching halt to which much of our busyness came in recent months, she maybe would have not minded much, and would have been one of the first to recognize it as a good gift from a wise and loving Father that forced us to do what we would not discipline ourselves enough to do on our own. (For the sake of clarification, I’m NOT saying that a deadly virus spreading across literally the whole world is a good gift, just that some of the byproducts are beneficial and should be considered with gratitude.) 

I wonder though if maybe some of us have passed over the potential goodness of a period of quietness. My friend was pointing me away from busyness towards a life of thoughtful consideration, and that very same thoughtful consideration is what many of us are attempting to outrun with our hectic daily pace. An internet blurb I saw recently mentioned this idea; it read “My favorite part of quarantine is that we were all forced to be alone with our thoughts for a little bit and everyone was like ‘Absolutely not. I will learn to bake bread from scratch.’”* The truth in this is humorous, but also convicting and thought-provoking. The humor comes in not least because the day I first saw it I was making bread from scratch, and even today as I write I’m baking again, typing while I wait for my dough to proof. The convicting part is that although there are those who have deliberately chosen to use this forced time of relative inactivity to learn a new skill, many of us are merely turning to “alternative” means such as baking (and by that I mean only means we wouldn’t normally consider) to drown out the clamor of our inner thoughts.

I don’t think this is a new phenomenon; with the advent and increasing prevalence of streaming services, podcasts, audiobooks, and curated internet radio stations, we’ve become by and large a society more adept at filling our ears with the thoughts, musings, and words of others than at thinking through our own inner dialogue and evaluating it for truthfulness, goodness, and edification; more skilled at stuffing our private responses, thoughts, and emotions into a box and piling on a steady stream of chatter to keep the lid closed than parsing out what is right in those responses and emotions and what needs to be reformed and renewed.

As I say this, I’m speaking at least as much to myself as any other. In the last few months, I’ve added three new podcasts to my subscription list, and even today received notification of a new one that is highly relevant to my life. (And yes, if you’re curious, I did indeed hit the subscribe button on that one also.) On one level, the question is one of content. If these podcasts don’t align with the standards of God’s Word (Phil 4:8 gives a concise though not entirely brief list of standards), then they have no place in my listening library. Are these podcasts actually good quality, not from a production standpoint but from a content standpoint? Are they going to help me become more like Christ or more like the world? That’s not to say that the only content to which we should listen is sermons and such, and there is a good place for interviews even with unbelievers, or stories, or discussions of secular books. We need to at least ask the question though. 

There’s another level on which we need to evaluate all such things, however, and there the question is one of replacement. What are they replacing? Sometimes, this is a great replacement. One of the tools used to combat things like the swirling thoughts and self-condemnation that may accompany depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideations is to fill one’s mind with something else, and in that context, these podcasts and sermons and books and other things are a great tool. They pull our minds away from the ruts in which we can often find ourselves and point us toward something else, and that is good. Other times, though, these things are a kind of escape, preventing us from thinking deeply about anything. In recent weeks, I sat down to write a brief paper and was surprised by the length of time it was taking to get anything coherent down. Further consideration revealed, though, that after I had completed the reading on the topic, instead of considering what I had read and thinking through my stance on the subject at hand, I had filled my ears and my mind with one of the new podcasts to which I’ve subscribed. The podcast, good and worthy of my time though it was, had replaced the thoughtful reflection and consideration in which I would otherwise have engaged. That’s not the only occasion either; all too often since then, I’ve recognized the cognitive weariness that accompanies continuous input and a lack of processing time.

As in all things, it requires moderation. My friend would probably phrase it this way: technology is a great servant but a poor master. Let’s be wise and discerning – and perhaps more sparing than we have been or are inclined to be – as we consider how to use our mental energy and how to engage with the litany of options available to us.

*Quote credit: I saw it on Facebook, but I believe it’s originally a tweet by @KevinFarzad. I’m not on Twitter and know nothing about this guy, so please don’t take this as any kind of recommendation to go follow him.