What Are You Busy With?

Xuefeng

August 16, 2005

Being busy is a hallmark of modern life, but what is the result of all this busyness? What are we actually busy with every day? Bill Gates is busy, President Bush was busy, CEOs of large companies are busy, street vendors are busy, workers and farmers are busy. Everyone is busy, but the outcomes are different. Being busy can be either a comedy or a tragedy; whether it is one or the other depends on what we are busy with. Being busy in the pursuit of truth, goodness, beauty, and love is certainly a comedy, while being busy in the pursuit of fame, fortune, power, and personal desires is definitely a tragedy. Some people are busy for the sake of national and ethnic interests—are their efforts worth it? No, they are not! They are busy blocking the progress of civilization, harming others for the benefit of a few. Many wars have been fought in the name of national and ethnic interests. If everyone prioritized national and ethnic interests over the interests of all humanity, these people would be the scourge of humanity.

Being busy for the sake of national or ethnic interests is narrow-minded and shortsighted. Consider the small nations in China's history: they exhausted their resources and mobilized the entire population to engage in life-and-death struggles with neighboring countries, draining the people and the treasury. What was the final outcome? Unification. And that was good—one unified China is better than many small Chinas constantly fighting each other. By analogy, if this world had no nations, or if the entire Earth were one nation, wouldn't that be great? At least the people wouldn’t need to support so many military personnel, and military expenditures could be eliminated. There would also be no need for so many administrative personnel—embassies, border guards, immigration offices, customs, and the like could be abolished, and visa procedures could be eliminated.

Unification is better than division. In this sense, being busy for the sake of national or ethnic interests is contrary to the development of global civilization. Some people are busy with religious or political parties—is that busyness worth it? No, it’s not! Those who are busy with religion and political parties are actually narrow-minded, blind, selfish, and self-serving. Their busyness does not bring peace to the world but rather disputes and chaos. Just think: if this world had no religions or political parties, wouldn’t that create a more peaceful and harmonious environment?

Some people are busy with their small families, working themselves to exhaustion. In the end, who remembers their grandfather? Which family can remain prosperous for generations? A lifetime of busyness for the sake of family might end up bringing not joy and happiness to future generations but rather pain and misfortune. And what about the husband-wife relationship? It can dissolve at any time. There’s no husband whose death would cause his wife to be unable to live, and no wife whose death would drive her husband to jump off a building. A home is a shackle, a cage, but people are deeply trapped in it, with no way out.

Today is the era of the internet; many people are busy online all day, writing articles, making comments, but they haven’t thought that these are all fleeting like smoke. Some articles remain online for only a few hours before disappearing. Do we still hope that people will return to read those articles? Other than reading them ourselves, who has the time to go back and read? Every day, there are new articles to read—who still reads outdated ones? Moreover, most articles do not bring truth, goodness, beauty, and love to people but rather anxiety, trouble, distress, and confusion. They create hatred and expose falsehood, evil, ugliness, and resentment, which is no different from garbage, except that this is cultural garbage, spiritual and mental garbage.

Some people are busy making "friends," attending meetings, gatherings, banquets, birthday celebrations, housewarming parties, weddings, and funerals. Is this joyful? Or sorrowful? The more worldly people you associate with, the more distress you will have. Is it really necessary to be busy with all this?

Some people are busy learning knowledge, reading books and magazines, attending various classes and exams, which is very hard work, just to make a living. I wonder, in ancient times, people didn’t have so many opportunities to acquire knowledge, and they didn’t have as much knowledge as we do today, but does that mean they lived unhappy, unfulfilled lives?

There are some people whose busyness is indeed valuable because they are busy pursuing truth, goodness, beauty, and love. From this, they gain wisdom, true joy, and happiness, and they elevate the quality of their LIFE. They not only fully enjoy the pleasures of life while they are alive but also lay a foundation for a beautiful future life. Jesus taught us, "What good is it to accumulate wealth on Earth? Accumulate treasures in heaven. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." This kind of busyness is the only busyness that is truly valuable. Pursuing truth, goodness, beauty, and love is walking on the way of the Greatest Creator. We should constantly ask ourselves: What am I busy with?