People say “Follow your heart. It will never lead you astray.” To which I respond with three words “Romeo & Juliet.” Feeling drawn to do something, feeling that it is necessary to do right now, that it’s significant in some way is definitely something we should be giving our undivided attention. However, this is not to say we should be focusing on implementing the thing, but attending to the fact that we feel drawn or driven and look underneath the hood to find the “why.”
Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lover and drawn to each other as good dramatic plotting, as a commentary on the fickleness of love, of the teenage brain, of passions without any governance, and as a morality play ending in “look before you leap….never mind.” Just because you are called to something doesn’t mean this is a message from some higher power saying “do that.” It could, but it could also be a means for you to avoid doing something you know you should be doing with your life. It could be a means of ignoring the fact that it’s time to make the scary decisions, make the difficult choices, make the changes that will take you to the next phase of your life, but it’s way easier to be busy with this thing that makes you happy.
It can be an indicator that you are in that waiting space between here and there. One phase of life is ending, the transition phase in underway, the new phase hasn’t started, but you can see it coming up and this makes people antsy. They feel driven to start working on the new stuff now, even though they don’t have everything they need, the timing isn’t right, they don’t have a clear vision of how things should go, it will cause more work later and draw things out… doesn’t matter because they need to do something other than just sit there. But the best thing to do is “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
It can be a means of avoiding seeing the big picture. Being busy keeps us from having to be quiet with ourselves, really take in where we are in this moment. Weirdly, being in the moment with a project, a passion, or a goal to be worked on can very much keep us from the actual moment. It can keep us from being present and fully ourselves, keep us from experiencing and accepting our suchness as it is right now. This let’s us feel empowered and progressing even while it prevents us from true empowerment. It doesn’t matter how spiritual based the busy work, it’s still busy work.
We can be called to do amazing things and yet if we’re doing them for all the wrong reasons, we end up disappointed and frustrated and wondering, what went wrong. So stop being busy, check the calling at the door, and look underneath it for the why.
