A new breed of Harding student is emerging across our campus. Many are returners, but they exhibit a newfound balance — poise. They do less, but do it better. I point out what I’m observing in many of you, in hopes that your spirit will spread to all of us.
I see you sitting up straighter, more attentive and more focused. I hear you saying you’ve cut something out of your schedule this term (a class, a pastime, a draining relationship) so that you could do a better job with the rest. Maybe you’ve noticed that “top priorities” is an oxymoron. I suspect you’ve asked, in each area of your life, “What’s my one priority — the one thing I keep if everything else goes?”
You think it’s great to be at Harding, but the greatness of your Harding experience doesn’t come from doing social clubs and Spring Sing and sports and mission trips and Netflix and service projects and singing groups and weekend camping trips and concerts and classes. You know you can’t do everything, but you’ve noticed what brings you real pleasure: what you’re good at. You intend to do that well.
You protect your rest. You schedule free time. I hear many of you saying you got a few extra hours of sleep when work lightened up, rather than burning the extra time with entertainment or more work. You don’t feel compelled to burn every hour before curfew like a middle-schooler drunk on freedom. Sometimes you go to bed early. Maybe you’ve realized you get more done more quickly, when rested than you do through long, grinding effort when exhausted. Maybe you’ve noticed that life feels more pleasurable after good sleep. You care enough about living well to get the most out of each day, not by stretching more hours out of it, but by being better rested in the fewer hours you’re awake.
I hear you talking about phones’ and social media’s tendency to wriggle and worm their way, like leeches under clothing, into your mental and emotional soft tissue. Many of you don’t know what to do about the problem, but you’re noticing it. I hear some of you setting thoughtful limits on when and how you’ll use these technologies. You use them to streamline your many responsibilities, but you protect the depth and richness of the few connections that matter most by talking face to face.
Why here, why now? The new Harding students might be expressing a broad cultural movement in our chaotic times, the quest for simplicity expressed by Greg McKeown’s recent bestseller “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.” The leadership of President McLarty, who speaks about rest as a spiritual discipline, and the trauma of fellow students’ deaths this past year, which made us reevaluate our own lives, matter, too. And essentialism is a deep current in our Christian faith, running from Jesus’s teachings about treasures in fields and pearls of great price through the epistles through the modern works like James Bryan Smith’s “The Good and Beautiful Life,” Gordon MacDonald’s “Ordering your Private World,” Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life,” or Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline.”
All these affirm the new Harding student’s prioritizing of rest, clarity and the defense of life from the unimportant stuff that’s always trying to worm its way in. One other idea from McKeown you might consider: buffering. Try out scheduling 50 percent more time than you think you need for everything you do, from walking to the caf to finishing a major project. Buffering is simple, but it feels miraculous. When unexpected problems arise, you have time to handle them while staying on schedule. When everything goes as planned, you have unexpected breathing space. Buffering lets you suddenly feel a wealth of time rather than constant time famine.
Maybe you’re one of those new Harding students I’ve described. If so, keep shining your light. You are making a bigger difference than you know.
