Regarding Modern Busyness

Dearest Reader,

It has come to my attention that everyone appears to be terribly occupied.

Occupied with proving usefulness.
Occupied with accumulating markers of success.
Occupied with the exhausting performance of being seen to manage it all.

One might reasonably ask when life became a matter of constant demonstration.

I have observed that those most eager to keep pace are often the very ones in need of slowing down. They hurry not because they must, but because stopping would require noticing how little of their effort is actually required.

There is, I assure you, no prize for relentless participation.

Creativity, too, has been treated rather poorly of late — summoned only when convenient, dismissed when it fails to perform on command. It is hardly surprising that it has taken to withdrawing altogether. Creative impulses have always favoured invitation over instruction.

Should you feel the urge to disengage this evening — from conversation, from expectation, from the quiet competition of modern life — consider that urge a sign of good sense rather than failure.

The world will carry on without your constant attention.
Most things do.

I shall continue to observe.

Yours most sincerely,
Lady Staywell