MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

READINGS: THIRTY THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

In the 2^nd reading of this 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Times, Year C (2 Thessalonians 3:7-12), St. Paul said, “We hear that some are conducting themselves among you in a disorderly way, by not keeping busy but minding the business of others.” Basically, St. Paul is saying, be busy minding your business, not that of others. This is not a call to indifference, but an invitation to the stewardship of inner self-reflection; a summon to self-alignment; a call to live with less noise and more integrity. No wonder he calls spending time minding other peoples’ business, “disorderly”. 

In this age of social media, there is a certain thrill to analyze other people and amplify their lives, scandals, and curated highlights. Private and public boundaries have become so collapsed that people’s struggles, triumphs, and mistakes demand immediate reaction rather than patient reflection, making it easier to police and vilify from a distance, and rewarding quick judgment and outrage with likes, shares, and social credit. Meanwhile our own soul, responsibilities, and character remain unattended to, as the time required for self-reflection and honest self-assessment is fragmented by notifications and feeds from the curated moments of others. Evaluating others becomes a defensive strategy to avoid facing our own failures, griefs, and limits, deflecting us from the harder and holier task of dealing with ourselves, the state of our soul, the integrity of our heart, the purity of our mind, naming our shame, and growing into a better version of the self. 

We do not grow by looking outward; we grow by looking inward. When we abandon the interior work of self-reflection for the comparison and judgment of others; when we trade our inner responsibility for the audit of other people’s lives, we become spectators of lives we were never called to live, sacrifice growth for distraction, and avoid the internal work on ourselves that produces growth, integrity, self-agency, and moral currency. 

My friends, our attention is a scarce and holy resource, and where and how we spend it shapes our habits, values, destiny, and who we become. Our primary responsibility in life is to manage the work of becoming better versions of ourselves and it is hard to do this if we are constantly in the business of minding other people’s business. The question is: What part of my life needs my care more than my commentary about others? When a post triggers strong feelings or impulse to critique someone online, I have learnt to wait for some time before commenting or sharing and use the pause to ask what the reaction reveals about my own needs and spend some time on an inward task. I have also decided to unfollow accounts that provoke envy or habitual judgment and follow accounts that educate, inspire, and curate virtue. The aim is to protect attention, refuse commodified judgment, and become steward of repair to the inner self. In this way, whatever voice we lend to others will be more measured, compassionate, sincere, wholesome, and with greater agency. When we tend to our inner life, the world will feel the difference more so than the commentary we run on others. Let us become the change that we desire in others.