Catching up

Do you feel like you are getting left behind? Like your life is whizzing past faster than you can keep up with? How often do you use the phrase ‘catching up’? We catch up for coffee, catch up on paperwork, catch up with family, catch up on the shows we missed when we were catching up with colleagues for drinks.

The culture of busy-ness and hurrying is a multi-faceted beast. It arises in part out of the information age and the resultant tirade of information and part out of the demise of rites of passage.

The information age, which to 20somethings like myself is the only age we have ever known, bombards us with thousands of media messages each day. This is additional to the work we do, the family responsibilities we have, the Facebook updates and Twitter feeds, the SMSs and calls we get on our mobiles, home lines, work phones and Skype. We do our best to surf the crest of the information (and thus expectation) wave. Some days we go to bed feeling like we failed our loved ones when we declined invitations, left emails unread, status updates unresponded to and messages not returned.

Then we are told, often by coaches like myself, that keeping our head above water isn’t enough. Even if you did accept the invitation, read the emails, respond to the updates and return the messages, did you engage in your world on a meaningful level? Did you connect with loved ones or take calls all the way through dinner? We resolve to do better, but the cycle of bombardment, response and lingering feeling of falling behind is unrelenting. So we try again to ‘catch up’.

In the good ‘ol days there were fewer messages yes, but the days and years were broken up with meaningful rites of passage. Times to celebrate, reflect and connect with those around us; Weddings, Christenings, 21st Birthdays, Sweet Sixteenths, Anniversaries, Kitchen Teas. Yes these events still happen and we mark them with a party but I think they have lost the element of reflection. What once were rites have become invitations and photos we review on Facebook. The wisdom they once held has evaporated.

So if you are tired of running behind your life, catching up here and there only to be overwhelmed again why not try something different. Put away the phones and laptops and have dinner and talk. Have a get together and talk about times past and notice how different you are ‘now’ to ‘then’. Punctuate the merry-go-round with something different. Create memories. Go places. Meet people. Perhaps then the information age ‘pressure’ to connect won’t overwhelm us.