Addicted to frenzy

At the beginning of a recent week, I looked at my calendar with surprise. Besides the requisite errands, my week was surprisingly empty.

In a near-panic, I did what any self-respecting person of the modern era does: I called friends and volunteered to watch their kids. I called other friends and planned outings. I invented errands just to get out of the house. I decided to repaint my office, spray paint a bedside table and end the week by throwing a harvest party in the backyard.

Only after the week’s end, when I was dutifully exhausted and overwhelmed, did I look back and realize what I had done. I had once again fallen prey to society’s addiction frenzy, the frenzy that comes from finding merit in a crammed schedule.

Ask people how they’re doing these days, and a common reply is “Busy!” As if busy has now become an emotion right along with happy, sad or fearful.

We members of the LDS Church are some of the worst perpetrators of the busy lifestyle. We wear our chock-full calendars and to-do lists like merit badges. You’re not living up to your full potential unless you stumble into church looking as if you’ve run a to-do-list marathon.

I feel this pressure especially from mothers. All the phone talk and park talk is of the multiple demands for our time. These are the bragging rights of parents today, and it’s hard not to feel a little inferior if you don’t have every night of the week booked with soccer, karate, piano, dance lessons, math club and tutoring. If I let my kids play outside after school, spinning circles and drawing with sidewalk chalk, I feel the guilt creeping in, especially when I see other mothers in their SUVs driving back and forth to basketball practice.

We feel this way as parents even if we’ve just heard conference talks about slowing down and cutting out activities that pull us away from the home. We feel guilty, even when we hear more studies about how overscheduling our kids turns them into adults who don’t know how to navigate the real world. There is still a sense that we’re missing a key part of life if we don’t drop into bed at night exhausted from the day’s activities.

The ironic part, of course, is that no one benefits from this arrangement. The world is not getting happier. Everywhere I go, I see moms with tight, fatigued faces. Kids don't seem particularly pleased, either. The complaint I hear from my kids when I’ve scheduled one-too-many activities is, “Mom, I just want to play.” Oh, yes, that. Better put it on the calendar before I forget.