Right now, at this very moment, every other person who’s alive is also really busy doing that.

Everyone you’ve ever met, family and friends no matter how faraway they are, celebrities from your favorite TV shows and movies, the people you follow on YouTube and Instagram, the princesses and presidents, dictators, drug lords and Nobel Prizes who make the news every day. Every person who’s helped you or kept you on hold at some customer service number, who’s driven you to the airport or waited at your table.

And the much, much larger group of people you’ve never run into. Not even once.

They’re all busy existing, just like you, breathing as we talk. Living their own lives all at the same time.

They’re real, doing all the real imperfect things of daily life. Eating early morning or late night toast and Nutella and once they’re done wondering if it was worth it, reading a book in a bubble bath that’s going to need more warm water soon, turning away from a rude sweaty armpit in the subway, getting irritated with someone they love for something they know is not worth it but still getting irritated, running out of toilet paper in media res, trying to make plans but waiting on someone who’s taking too long to answer, vaguely feeling like days are just okay but not as storyworthy as life said they would be, doubting whether they can do something they want to do, singing in the shower, popping a pimple, deciding what to wear based on someone they’re going to see, and most likely checking their phones while they do all the above.

Pretty much all of the exotic good and bad actitivies that the world has to offer are being experienced right now. There are people renting jet-skis for the first time, people losing their virginity, people flying over the Atlantic knowing that they should be sleeping but playing those weird airplane TV set games instead and drinking tomato juice, people running outside and rolling around naked in the snow after a sauna in Norway, people studying for an econ exam, people finding out they are sick, people receiving open heart surgery, people proposing in really original ways and filming it, people making too much noise with their candy wrapper at the cinema, and the list does go on.

There are so many people doing things from this catalog at any given time that it would not be surprising if every movie you’ve watched, book you’ve read, song you’ve listened to and dish you’ve tasted was being enjoyed by someone at this moment.

Billions of brushes moving around in all directions, existing right now all at the same time but each at its point of contact with the canvas.