DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING – SIT THERE

by Adam Harbinson

Three men were travelling in a car on their way to a conference at which the one of them was to be the main speaker. He sat chatting to the driver as his two colleagues debated the topic of awareness. They were discussing the difference between awareness and concentration. ‘Concentration is exclusive,’ said one. ‘You must block out of your mind all but the thing you’re observing. But awareness involves being tuned in to all of your environment.’ The conversation rambled on with the chap in front paying little heed. Suddenly the driver swerved to avoid a pothole and ran over a goat. But the two in the back of the car saw and heard nothing. They were discussing the topic of awareness, but they were concentrating on each other.

I read that story in a book the other day and my mind went back to a friend of mine who committed suicide – must be nearly twenty years ago now. He had recently been promoted to Head of Department in the Civil Service, he had two lovely children and a good wife, and he lived in an expensive part of Bangor. He asked me to help him with some home improvements, and so I was busy connecting up lights and doing bits and pieces as he followed me around, looking up at me as I balanced on the stepladder. I was concentrating on what I was doing, and the chap in the back seat of the car was right, I had excluded everything from my mind apart from what I was doing. I saw the vacant look in my friend’s eyes but I paid no attention, and I thought he was joking when he said he wished he could be like me, so I mumbled something to cover my mild embarrassment. Three weeks later he was dead.

I swore I would never allow it to happen again, but it has. I was in the company of a lady a short time ago at an event I had organised. I didn’t know her very well, but I wonder if I hadn’t been flying around making sure everything was running smoothly, had I or another person that evening paid her a little more attention by really listening to her, she might not have gone home and killed herself. Who knows, but still I wonder will I ever learn that there’s a time to stop doing, a time to sit and listen.

O, I have the theory all right, in fact I was writing to my older daughter the other day about marriage. It’s been a busy summer and I was telling her that I’d taken a couple of days off work and I really enjoyed sitting with my wife for an hour in the mornings talking… and listening. I told her that marriage can be wonderful, that what she'll probably enjoy most about it is taking time to consciously share in the other person's life. To say, 'Is there anything you're unhappy about? Is anything bothering you?' – and then sort it out.

Awareness in this sense is at risk of becoming a lost art; children spend hours in front of computer screens and grow up with little or no social skills; mothers and fathers work all the hours God sends to maintain unnecessarily high living standards, but they hardly ever talk. Business partners are so caught up in their daily activities that they end up pulling in opposite directions, and church pastors, God help them – a recent survey published in the Ministry Today magazine reports that almost 70% of them say they’re too busy to spend time with God.

And yet the problem isn’t insurmountable. All we need do is respond to the often unspoken cry; ‘Don’t just do something, sit there!’