Virtue is important to me. I want to be known as a good person – trustworthy, dependable, honest… You get the idea.

I don’t hear a lot about the cultivation of virtue. Occasionally as you pass an elementary school you might see the “character quality” of the month listed on the marque, but by and large Americans don’t seem to focus on growing in virtue or character.

With one glaring exception – somehow, busyness has become the new American virtue.

Have you noticed? America seems obsessed with cultivating busyness. We are wildly busy simply going about the business of being busy. We are even busy making sure our children are busy.

Twenty minutes late for a lunch date? No problem, claim the virtue of busyness, and all is not only forgiven, but admired. To be busy is to be absolved of every slip of the mind, every missed deadline, every forgotten appointment/date/family obligation.

To be busy is to have an interesting life. To be busy is the be about important things. To be busy is to be important.  Idleness is evil. Idleness is a waste.

Or is it? In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God considered rest so important he set aside an entire day for rest. If you wade deeper into the minutia of the law, you would find that he actually set aside one of every seven years as a year of rest. Can you imagine?

I find that doing nothing is sometimes the most important thing I can do. To let my mind wander aimlessly. To let my body sit and recharge. To focus on nothing but the here and now.

To be present in nothingness is to be aware and in touch with the most elemental part of life. My breath; my heartbeat; the warmth of my beloved’s hand in mine. These are gifts that cannot be measured and can be so easily missed.

I reject busyness. I choose to clear my calendar. I choose to life a simple life; a basic life. I choose to be available to myself, my loved ones and to the infinite beauty of life that is present every second of every day if we will just take the time to notice.