Too Busy? Advice from a 1917 Farm Woman As a child, I longed to be a part of little Laura Ingalls' world that was captured so vividly in the Little House on the Prairie books. Now I am reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks. Hers is the perspective of a 1917 modern farmer woman trying to sell her women readers on the attractiveness of farming. She writes in this collection of columns for the Missouri Ruralist that rural life is lucrative and deeply satisfying.
Her life on the farm I read and fantasized about as a child seemed so different from mine. But reading her columns written for other women, I was surprised to learn how similar our lives are. She reflects on time and time-management, pointing out she has no more tasks to do than in previous years, but unexplainably, she has increasingly less time. I, an urban woman living ninety years later, am in the same predicament.
Wilder laments not having enough time despite possessing numerous time-saving inventions of the early twentieth century. She writes of going to a meeting in a motor car instead of in a wagon pulled by a team of horses. Instead of car rides saving time, she said that she and many others were late to the meeting and that there was a general sense of rushing the entire time. After, there seemed to be no time to talk as there had been in years past. She ponders, "We have so many machines and so many helps, in one way and another, to save time and yet I wonder what we do with the time we save. Nobody seems to have any!"
Time management and methods of organization are big business now. Just think Getting Things Done or FranklinCovey. How much money have you spent on calendars, organizers or time-management systems? How much time does it take you to synchronize your home and work schedules with your loved ones' schedules? Just because we are wired with more devices than ever, are we actually saving any time? Do texting and e-mailing and blackberrying really get more done and provide us with more convenience than talking directly to one another? Are we losing something important through these inventions? Wilder seems to think so.
Wilder writes about how important it is to maintain experience despite the advent of new technology. After running water is piped into her kitchen, she confesses that though having water readily available saves her much time, something is lost by not having an excuse to pause in the meadow after drawing water from the creek.
It doesn't take long to proverbially "stop and smell the roses" or to contemplate the glassy cool smoothness of a shoreline. I suggest we take her advice to heart:
You are "so busy"! Oh yes I know it! We are all busy, but what are we living for anyway, and why is the world so beautiful if not for us?
