1: Psychologists and mental health professionals call it “hurry sickness.”
They label it a disease. And it’s an epidemic in our modern world, John Mark Comer writes in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
Hurry sickness is defined as “A behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness.”
And: “A malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and so tends to perform every task faster and to get flustered when encountering any kind of delay.”
The term was first used by the cardiologist Dr. Meyer Friedman, who theorized “that type A people who are chronically angry and in a hurry are more prone to heart attacks,” John Mark writes.
Meyer’s definition of hurry sickness is: “A continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.”
When did he first say it? Back in the 1950s.
“Not to play armchair psychologist, but I’m pretty sure we all have hurry sickness,” John Mark writes.
“And hurry,” he observes, “is a form of violence on the soul.”
Here are John Mark’s ten symptoms of hurry sickness. How many ring true for us?
“1: Irritability—We get mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily.
2: Hypersensitivity—Minor things quickly escalate to major emotional events.
3: Restlessness—When we actually do try to slow down and rest, we can’t relax.
4: Workaholism (or just nonstop activity)—We just don’t know when to stop. Or worse, we can’t stop.
5: Emotional numbness—We just don’t have the capacity to feel another’s pain. Or our own pain for that matter.
6: Out-of-order priorities—We feel disconnected from our identity and calling.
7: Lack of care for our bodies—We don’t have time for the basics: eight hours of sleep a night; daily exercise; healthy, home-cooked food; minimum stimulants; margin.
8: Escapist behaviors—When we’re too tired to do what’s actually life-giving for our souls, we each turn to our distraction of choice: overeating, overdrinking, binge-watching Netflix, browsing social media, surfing the web, looking at porn—name our preferred cultural narcotic.
9: Slippage of spiritual disciplines—Things that are truly life-giving for our souls are the first to go—such as quiet time in the morning, Scripture, prayer, Sabbath, worship on Sunday, a meal with our community, and so on
10: Isolation—We feel disconnected from God, others, and our own soul.”
John Mark’s advice: “Reject any guilt or shame we’re feeling right now. It’s not helpful, rarely from God, and definitely not my agenda with this little exercise.”
His point? “An over-busy, hurried life of speed is the new normal in the Western world, and it’s toxic.”
Psychologists tell us that anxiety can be a symptom of a deeper issue.
“In one recent study,” John Mark writes, 39 percent of Americans reported being more anxious than they were a year ago.
“That’s not something to keep your eye on; it’s an emotional epidemic.”
2: Being in a continual state of hurry not only impacts our emotional life, but our spiritual lives as well.
“Some of the most sincere and honest people I know tell me that when they get into the presence of God, they just can’t pay attention,” John Mark writes.
Theologian Thomas Merton once said, “the rush and pressure of modern life” is a “pervasive form of contemporary violence.”
“Violence is the perfect word,” John Mark observes. “Hurry kills relationships. Love takes time; hurry doesn’t have it. It kills joy, gratitude, appreciation; people in a rush don’t have time to enter the goodness of the moment.
“It kills wisdom,” he notes. “Wisdom is born in the quiet, the slow. Wisdom has its own pace. It makes us wait for it—wait for the inner voice to come to the surface of our tempestuous mind, but not until waters of thought settle and calm.
“Hurry kills all that we hold dear, spirituality, health, marriage, family, thoughtful work, creativity, generosity… name your value.
“Hurry is a sociopathic predator loose in our society.”
In his powerful book on the Sabbath, Wayne Muller observes:
“A ‘successful’ life has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt and afraid, and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give thanks.”
John Mark sees something more sinister in our current state of huriedness: “Many have noted that the modern world is a virtual conspiracy against the interior life. It’s hard not to see a darker force behind all this than simple capitalism. When we uncritically hurry our way through our digital terrain, we make the devil’s job relatively easy.
“Regardless of our income levels,” he notes, “attention is our scarcest resource. Jesus wisely said our hearts will follow behind our treasures. Usually we interpret treasure to mean our two basic resources: time and money.
“But an even more precious resource is attention. Without it our spiritual lives are stillborn in the womb.”
3: Attention leads to awareness. “All the contemplatives agree,” John Mark notes. “The mystics point out that what’s missing is awareness.
Many of us live without an awareness or sense of God’s presence as we go about our days.
Is God absent? Or is there something else going on?
“Could it be that, with a few said exceptions, we’re the ones who are absent, not God?” he asks. “We sit around sucked into our phones or TV or to-do lists, oblivious to the God who is around us, with us, in us, even more desirous than we are for relationship. . .
“God is omnipresent—there is no place God is not. And no time he isn’t present either. Our awareness of God is the problem, and it’s acute.”
Which is why John Mark “harps” on technology.
“There is more at stake here than our attention spans,” he suggests. “Because what we give our attention to is the person we become. Put another way: The mind is the portal to the soul, and what we fill our mind with will shape the trajectory of our character.
“In the end our lives are no more than the sum of what we gave our attention to,” John Mark observes. Which does not bode well “for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel.”
The stakes are high, he believes. “Not only is hurry toxic to our emotional health and spiritual lives, but it’s also symptomatic of much deeper issues of the heart.”
John Mark writes: “I love how John Ortberg framed it: ‘Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.'”
It’s what William Irvine calls “misliving.” In his book A Guide to the Good Life, he writes:
“There is a danger that we will mislive—that despite all our activity, despite all the pleasant diversions we might have enjoyed while alive, we will end up living a bad life. There is, in other words, a danger that when we are on your deathbed, we will look back and realize that we wasted our one chance at living. Instead of spending our lives pursuing something genuinely valuable, we squandered it because we allowed ourselves to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.”
Or as Jesus said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I letting the relentless pace of life erode my wellbeing, relationships, and spiritual awareness—or am I creating space for rest, presence, and what matters most?
Action: Identify one symptom of hurry sickness in my own life and take a small, practical step today to slow down, reclaim my attention, and nourish my soul.
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