Vol.13 No.6

Fast, Furious, and Frantic
As the pace of modern life accelerates, our health, our families, and our sanity are crumbling.
By Aiko Reichard

As a child, I distinctly remember how slowly time passed. The days dragged on, and it seemed like an eternity until I would be ten years old. Now I wish those days would return. At times I feel like my childhood pet hamster, running incessantly on his wheel but going nowhere.

A Prevalent Predicament

Unfortunately, these feelings are anything but foreign to most people living in the Western world. Life is hurtling along at a mind-boggling pace, and the consequences are detrimental. In reality, this pace only reflects deeper issues that need to be addressed.

We can’t seem to fit all of our activities into twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, so we take a speed reading course to help us get through college. We use email because it will get to the recipient more quickly and we won’t waste time addressing and stamping an envelope. We research using the internet so we just have to type

a few words into a search engine rather than spending time searching through books and periodicals for information. Now we are even trying to cut down the time we spend for relationships, as illustrated in a book that I came across recently entitled Speed Dating: The Smarter, Faster Way to Lasting Love.

We eat at a fast food joint so we can eat while we drive and eliminate preparation and clean-up time. If we want a “home cooked” meal, we use the microwave so our meal is ready to eat in only a few minutes. One restaurant in Tokyo charges by the minute rather than the amount of food eaten. Ironically, at lunch hour customers wait in line outside to get in.¹

Many Americans sacrifice their sleep to make up for their shortage of time. Consequently, sleep deprivation is now a serious problem in the U.S. On average, Americans today get 20 % less sleep compared with those living one hundred years ago.² We have adopted a twenty-four hour society, with stores, gas stations, and restaurants, offering all day and all night service. Overnight flight, bus, and train routes demand all-night operators, attendants, and mechanics. People who work night shifts disrupt their natural circadian rhythms and often do not obtain sufficient sleep.

Since we don’t get enough sleep and because we drive ourselves so hard, we find ourselves searching for ways to keep up. Our bodies can’t handle the strain of our lifestyle and our minds need a boost, so we develop a dependency on caffeine. Similarly, once we are accustomed to the fast pace, we may go as far as to take the drug Speed (appropriately named) or other amphetamines in life’s duller moments.

Why so Rushed?

Sometimes we forget that life one hundred years ago was busy too. Farmers had to get up before dawn to tend the cows, then work hard in the field until dusk. Housewives had to cook, clean, and launder without modern conveniences. In fact, some studies show that now we work fewer hours and have more leisure time than even a few decades ago.³ While having more or less leisure time is the subject of heated debate, one thing remains certain, we are busier and more rushed now than ever.⁴

Michael, a busy university student wanted to know how busy he really was. After keeping a time diary for one week, he found that he had had fifty hours of free time that week, and yet he said, “I still feel rushed.”⁵

Compared with life a century ago, more things clamor for our attention and bombard our senses. James Trunzo, a Manhattan architect who designs automated environments, comments, “Technology is increasing the heartbeat. We are inundated with information. The mind can’t handle it all. The pace is so fast now, I sometimes feel like a gunfighter dodging bullets.”⁶

Besides increased information, there are more things to do. The ratio of physical laborers to sedentary laborers has decreased, so people have to find time outside of work to get their exercise. Once upon a time school was simply school, but now there are myriads of extra-curricular activities to participate in. Even the options for leisure time activities have multiplied.

In many cases, busyness is not necessarily a shortage of time but rather a mindset, a chosen way of living. Today, we still have twenty-four hours in a day, but we try to shove everything into as little time as possible. We are obsessed with efficiency. We have become experts at multitasking and can crowd multiple activities into a single period of time. Even during our time off and holidays, we try to do as much as we can. We lose sight of the purpose of taking time off and never get the rest that we need. Multitasking and busyness have both become socially acceptable, even admirable. The busier a person, the more successful we think him to be.

The Negative Effects

The effects of busyness are unquestionably detrimental. CNN reported that husbands of women who overwork have a 25% lower chance of living in good health than the average husband.⁷ In Japan, karoshi or excessive overwork, has led to many deaths.⁸

Busyness or overwork, resulting in sleep deprivation and fatigue, can have fatal consequences. Not surprisingly, many accidents on the road, on sea, on railways, in hospitals, and in military operations can be traced to sleep deprivation and fatigue.⁹ Also, shift workers who disrupt their circadian rhythms, and thus their natural sleep patterns, suffer from more health problems than day workers.¹⁰

In addition, sleep deprivation, along with the stress of busyness, causes increased irritability and our relationships suffer. A lack of spending quality time together can also injure families. Marriages have broken up as a result of a driven spouse who makes family second to work and personal accomplishments.

But our busyness doesn’t just affect those around us; it profoundly affects us—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Driving oneself too hard will weaken physical health and also robs the soul of peace. Once we get into the habit of rushing in our daily duties and tasks, the same mindset easily invades our spiritual life. We expect instant gratification and forget what it means to “rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” Psalm 37:7.

Looking Deeper

Behind busyness lies more serious issues that need to be dealt with. Many times overwork comes from a bad case of “affluenza,” an attempt to “keep up with the Joneses.”¹¹

In order to maintain a high standard of living, we work more. To keep up appearances, parents get involved with more activities and push their children harder to succeed.

Other times we try to keep ourselves busy so that we drown out the still, quiet voice of conscience that is nagging at our souls. Our lives are empty and pointless, so we try to do all we can to fill them. Sometimes busyness can stem from a craving for acceptance, and we hope to find it by living a driven and extra-productive life. Yet, our activities and accomplishments will never fill that void or give that acceptance.

According to David Gleick, author of Faster: The Acceleration of Almost Everything, “A lot of our obsession with speed is, in a way, a fear of death.”¹² Our lifetime is limited, and we fear that we won’t fulfill all of our goals and that we will die before we do all we want to do in this life.

Finding Solutions

To those caught in the busyness of daily life, Christ invites, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matthew 11:28, 29. Solutions to these problems of busyness are found only in Jesus Christ.

As our Creator, Christ knew that we needed rest. At the very beginning of the world He set an example of resting and reserved an entire twenty-four hours for that purpose. “…In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” “Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord.” Exodus 31:17, 15. It is perhaps more vital now than ever that we take the time to rest on the Sabbath since it seems increasingly easy to become swept away with the pace of this world.

We need time to dwell on eternal realities and regain a proper perspective of life. Christians should not be driven by a fear of death, for this world is not the only reality. Our short life of seventy years is not enough to do all that there is to do. But we don’t need to feel pressured to do everything now because—if faithful—we have eternity to look forward to. Then we won’t be limited by the constraints of time and we will have forever to make up for what we didn’t have time to do here on earth. But, there is one difference. It will be countless times better!

References

1. James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of Almost Everything.
2. Wake Up America, Report of the National Commission on Sleep Disorders, Vol. 1, p. 22.
3. Geoffrey C. Godbey, Time for Life, pp. 94-96.
4. Ibid.; Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American; Michael Hout and Carol Hanley, The Overworked American Family, 1968-2001.
5. See Reference 3, p. 230.
6. www.probe.org/docs/time, “Time and Busyness.”
7. www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/08/18, “Study: When Wives Overwork, Husbands’ Health Declines.”
8. www.coxhealth.com/HealthNews/reuters, May 24, 2002, “Japan Reports Record Deaths From Overwork.”
9. See Reference 2, pp. 51-55.
10. http://www.cawthron.org.nz/Assets/Cawlec97.pdf October 1997, “Sleep, Health, and Safety: Challenges in a 24-hour Society” pp. 19-22.
11. www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza, PBS Series, “Affluenza.”
12. See Reference 1.

* Aiko Reichard is a Secondary Education major at Hartland College.