Can staying busy be a way of running away from my problems?

Rabbi Landau teaches that “busy is the most respectable way to run away from your life.” His example: a marriage is cracking, so a man takes on another business, another project, another deadline.

Now he has urgent problems, respectable problems, “problems you can show people,” and the perfect excuse never to look at the one thing that is actually on fire. The world calls him driven, ambitious, a provider. Rabbi Landau calls it “a hiding place with a salary.”

He points to the prophet Yonah. Yonah didn't sit home and hide. He bought a ticket, got on a ship, and went somewhere. Yet the pasuk says, “Livroach Tarshishah milifnei Hashem,” to run toward Tarshish, away from Hashem. “Same trip.”

So look carefully at the thing you keep running toward. “It might be the thing you are running from.” As he puts it, the most dangerous escape is not alcohol, not even gambling: “it's achievement.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Being busy can be avoidance with a respectable name.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

There is one thing actually on fire, like a cracking marriage, and facing it is harder than taking on another project.

What may be behind it

Work gives urgent, respectable problems you can show people, and the world applauds it as ambition, so the escape is never questioned.

Deepest human truth

Like Yonah, a person can move forward and run away at the same time. What you keep running toward may be what you are running from.

More questions from this teaching

• What does the story of Yonah teach about running away from what we need to face?