I read The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World, by John Mark Comer, because after seeing it on Instagram, I was thoroughly intrigued. I’ve read several books in this concept and idea of slowing down and creating space for what matters most. I’ve done several studies on the spiritual disciplines, and one thing that tends to come back around often is the idea of hurriedness. It’s so hard to live in this day and age without feeling the need to hurry. Without feeling the pressure of impatience as we live in a world of instant gratification.
When you think of the concept of making margin; making white space in your calendar for what matters most, you often don’t think about the idea that our schedules being so packed is what is in fact causing this unnecessary need for hurry. We run from one activity to the next, always wanting more; always trying to fit in something else into our day. We so seldom sit and simply enjoy the moment in front of us. We try to rush through one experience to generate the next. All the while, even if we’ve done the work to clear our schedules and schedule time for play for fun for friends, we often find ourselves looking at the clock wondering when the bell will chime for us to move to the next activity.
I have an Apple Watch, just like many Americans do, however I’ve decided to stop wearing it on the weekends, particularly on Saturday so I’m not tempted to check the time repeatedly. I will still have my phone with me, and have started to lean towards setting an alarm if there’s an activity or an event that we need to prepare for on a Saturday. If I do wear my watch, I’ve started changing the face to where all I see is the time or a picture, and silence the notifications – that way I can still get all my steps in with a little more accuracy, but it’s not such a deterrent as some thing that is so bad.
John Mark does a fantastic job in this book of really laying out what it looks like to eliminate hurry. You’ve heard me do the free Simplified Ruthless Declutter Challenge and this book is in titled the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – that’s because it’s often times necessary to be ruthless. We often think of this word as such a deterrent – as something that is so bad. However, I think it’s necessary when we think about taking back our time. There’s 1000 different things we could say yes to. We need to be ruthless in what we take off of our schedules. We need to be ruthless in how we carve out time with the people that matter most to us. We need to be ruthless in how we guard our sacred spaces in time.
John Mark puts it beautifully:
Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to. That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good, beautiful, and true in his world. But not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel. (As if we “give” it in the first place; much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention.) But again: we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.
We so often hurry along life chasing the next big thing. Whether it’s at work, or in our personal lives, we continually reach for more more more in hopes of reaching satisfaction. But until we come to the realization that only in Christ alone can we be truly and completely be satisfied, we will always be disenchanted. We will spend our lives in a rush grasping at air.
Ultimately, nothing in this life, apart from God, can satisfy our desires. Tragically, we continue to chase after our desires ad infinitum. The result? A chronic state of restlessness or, worse, angst, anger, anxiety, disillusionment, depression—all of which lead to a life of hurry, a life of busyness, overload, shopping, materialism, careerism, a life of more…which in turn makes us even more restless. And the cycle spirals out of control.
John Mark Comer
I read this book within a couple of months of To Hell with the Hustle and after having completed When Moore Becomes Less. To say the three messages are intertwined is an understatement. They are a part of a greater movement towards cultivating space for what matters most in our lives. And let me be the first to tell you – the thing that matters most – it’s not success. And it’s not more of anything that this world can offer. Slowly, ever so slowly, there is a push towards not only simplicity of life, but simplicity of schedule as well. The idea that slow and simple are also good. I highly recommend this to anyone who has become disenchanted – for anyone seeking to slow down and who is ready to ruthlessly eliminate hurry in their lives.
