Back to Busy…. Real Busy
by Dr. Lori Hart
On April 30th, I wrote a blog (You Have No Idea How Hard These People Work — The Hart Collective) encouraging student affairs folks to take some time to flourish with actionable ideas for how to use the summer months to reset. I took my own advice. I flourished.
My family was invited on a once-in-a-lifetime trip with friends. I traveled to Panama where I was born and spent time with loved ones. I had pockets of quiet while my daughter was at camp. I started taking meetings outside, and instead of so many Zoom calls, I implemented a “walk and talk,” walking my dogs while talking to many of you. It kind of worked. I do feel rejuvenated.
And then, as it always does, the season shifted. Last week I slow-rolled into busy with a fraternity convention (thank you Zeta Psi Fraternity), and tomorrow I fast-pace into busy, real busy. Planes, trains, automobiles, hotel rooms, rental cars, Ubers, crappy airport food… all to get to the place I love most: a college campus filled with college students.
All summer, I saved an article called The Ordinary Miracle of Existing, planning to read it right before the busy season began. Tonight was that night. This excerpt stayed with me:
“Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience. Yet it is the easiest to overlook, to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, have our coffee, make breakfast, send the kids off to school, go to our jobs, move through our routines, worry about deadlines, check off items on our to-do list. And we forget that beneath all of it lies something profoundly rare: existence itself. The simple fact that we are here, conscious and aware, is so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous. Because we experience that miracle every day, we treat it as ordinary, even guaranteed, mostly unnoticed at all. We postpone joy, assuming there will always be more time. We don’t see the beauty in small moments. In making this comment, I am aware that in the time-driven, frantic pace of our world today, many people do not have the luxury of pausing to take stock of such moments.
There is a little more to the story. There will never be another you in the future of the universe.”
—Alan Lightman, The Ordinary Miracle of Existing, The Atlantic, June 2, 2026
Lightman goes on to reflect on how astonishing it is that consciousness even happened, that in the vastness of time and space, each of us gets this one improbable chance to be here, to notice, to feel, to participate. He reminds us that the ordinary moments we rush through are actually the miracle itself.
I’m soaking in these words as I step into my busiest stretch of the year. I am grateful for it. If memory serves, I gave my first speech (thank you, University of Florida) in 1995. Do the math… I could be tired. Instead, I am profoundly grateful that I get to exist and do this work.
Mary Oliver, in her poem Sometimes, offers this simple instruction:
“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
As you begin your own very busy season of life, I’m really glad you exist. I hope you’ll pay attention to the work we get to do with college students, be astonished by the good stuff, and I cannot wait to see you at AFA, so we can “tell about it.”
About Dr. Lori Hart
For over thirty years, she has been the 'go-to guru' for taking the messiest, most complex problems on college campuses and turning them into systems that make sense.
She’s a researcher, a champion for student health, and a parent who understands exactly what’s at stake. She believes that we don't need more rules, we need better relationships.
Looking to engage your chapter or community in supportive and encouraging conversations about the type of culture you can create to flourish?