The Busy Life

Neetisha Khetan
Readers Hope
Published in
4 min readJul 18, 2023
A black and white image of a busy street with people crossing it at a Zebra Zrossing and many vehicles waiting on the other side.
Photo by Jonathan Mabey on Unsplash

“Everyone is so busy with their lives, it seems like I am the only free one”, my friend messaged this morning.

It’s true. Everyone seems busy. I have interacted with countless people in the last 6 months, who said — “Life is good, so busy!” as a reply to my simple question — “What’s up?”

Sigh.

There was a time when I aspired to be busy all the time.

Busy so I could feel satisfied with the hustle in life. The rush of always having to do the next thing can somehow feel very productive.

Busy so I could feel like life is so great. The exhilaration of doing things and being financially rewarded for it is amazing.

Busy so I didn’t have time to think about other people’s motivations to stay busy all the time. (ha!)

Busy so I could see whether the grass on the other side was really greener.

Many years ago, when I was working in a corporate job, I like to think I was very busy. I was so busy that I used to reach my workplace at 7:30 am every morning and leave not before 8 pm.

Was I busy with work all the time?

No.

This was also where most of my social interaction happened. Much of the time was spent on things other than work, sometimes under the pretext of work.

I was probably using busyness as a time filler. And also as a way to show productivity.

I took on more work, more work-related travel, and more responsibilities outside my area of work to prove how busy I was with so many things.

Life changed completely when I had my daughter. Every second of your time gets accounted for when caring for a newborn.

Bundle that with working ( for money), and you don’t realize how fast days will fly by.

In that state of sleep deprivation and being forever ‘present’, I think busyness became a necessity.

I didn’t choose this kind of busyness, but I did choose this stage of life and busyness came with it.

Eventually though, as I gained more control over my time and reduced/removed things that I could from my life to make more space, I became less busy.

Every time I became less busy, I found something else to fill that free space in my life.

Sleep cycles became better — a good time to try my hand at baking.

The kid started going to playschool — a perfect time to start working again.

The pandemic brought outside life to a halt — time to take up painting more seriously and spend a lot more time doing that.

This was also the time I was visiting the questions in my mind more and more frequently — questions about my life and purpose and all the stuff we question during a mid-life crisis.

Busyness became my tool for escapism — a way to avoid slowing down to face the tough questions in life.

In more recent times, and especially after trying very hard to slow down and match my daughter’s “stop and smell the roses” pace — I have asked myself this question again and again.

Why is it, that everyone is so busy?

Could it be that busyness is a result of an increase in consumerism or a byproduct of the digital age?

Or maybe it has just become a badge of honor?

And if it has, do I want it? Or would I rather be the person who is available on a weekday afternoon for coffee and quality conversation?

There is indeed a connection between being busy and feeling more fulfilled. My question is whether it is inherent or influenced.

Do we feel happy in busyness because that’s what we have been conditioned to believe?

Keynes predicted that the age of abundance would make us all relax, because it would be easier to get everything we need, like food, clothes, and entertainment. But maybe knowing that there are 10 great TV shows you should watch, nine important books to read, eight bourgeois skills your child hasn’t mastered, seven ways you’re exercising wrong, six ways you haven’t sufficiently taken advantage of the city, etc., fosters a kind of metastasized paradox of choice, a perma-FOMO. ” — The Atlantic

Socrates said, “Beware the barrenness of the busy life.”

I am not against doing work. I think everyone should work hard and contribute to the world in the best possible way for them. And I understand that busyness is a necessity for many people and in many life stages.

But if we are busy and missing out on other important things like relationships and health, then to what extent is this busyness worth it?

In a world where we are defined by what we do, it is easy to attach self-worth to productivity.

But busyness, in many ways can lead to an existential crisis. Not being able to slow down, not allowing yourself to — is probably more dangerous than not having enough money ever will be.

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