“Speed, instant access, and just-in-time are the touchstones of the new media and connected man; and speeding up each task along with multitasking creates a way of life with no dead time. But paradoxically, eliminating dead time removes time for living. Man cannot live to the full when he stifles his consciousness with unceasing activity.” (Jean-Claude Larchet)
“One of the challenges of living in a world that is so fast paced and intense, is that we can have life events thrown at us at a pace in which we feel that we cannot keep up. In this discussion, we do not use “keeping up” in the sense of staying on top of tasks that need to be completed, but rather we mean it in the sense of processing the many experiences, events, and encounters that come our way. A natural phenomenon that can occur, is that as the days pass, especially during times like we are presently passing through, we can accumulate experiences and significant events that we never had a chance to process. After some time, these unprocessed events and experiences begin to pile up and cause us to begin to feel overwhelmed, unusually anxious, have trouble sleeping, or even feel depressed. When this happens, it is as though our mind is beckoning us to go back and sort through everything we have been bombarded with, and process it fully, before moving on.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)
“Almost every person is overwhelmed by the too-muchness of modern life, even on a day to day basis…Your deepest desire…is the one manifested by your daily life and habits.” (Robert A. Johnson, James Smith)
“As daily “life” happens, we are in a constant state of assigning meanings to encounters, interactions, conversations, world events, events in our lives, and to life changes. These meanings that we assign occur immediately and are deep in meaning. They also often occur on an unconscious level. It doesn’t take too much time before unprocessed life events begin to pile up and begin to cause us distress. Learning to take time, even daily, to sit and sort through all of the things we have been impacted by keeps our inner world functioning and keeps our soul fine-tuned.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)
“I sit on my favorite rock, looking over the brook, to take time away from busyness, time to be. I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about taking being time; it’s something we all need for our spiritual health, and often we don’t take enough of it.” (Madeleine L'Engle)