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March 29th, 2024

Insight

Time to put the brakes on being busy

Gina Barreca

By Gina Barreca

Published April 14, 2015

The small kid in the bunny suit was deeply engrossed in an incessantly beeping tablet game when her mother asked her to pass the box of Cheerios to the cashier.

I was standing behind their cart with The National Enquirer, which was absorbing all my attention, until I heard the little girl reply in the kind of modulated tone usually associated with prime-time television news anchors, "I can't help, Mom. Can't you see I'm very busy?"

The mother and I made spontaneous eye contact. She automatically did the shoulder shrug, communicating, "Kids these days, huh?" and I smiled and nodded, silently responding, "Just imagine!"

But I also made a resolution: I'm going to banish the expression "I'm very busy" from my vocabulary.

If a 6-year-old in a bunny suit feels she can claim that her demanding schedule doesn't allow her to participate in the lowly duties associated with shopping, then everybody is "very busy."

I'm taking that kid-on-the-tablet moment as a sign that we've gone too far in terms of using "I'm very busy" as a "Get Out Of Being Polite/Considerate/Attentive Free!" card.

In America, when somebody asks us "How are you?" we now yell, as if in a chorus "Busy! I'm so busy, you wouldn't believe it. I'm not available to talk to you, for example."

Nobody says "Fine. You?" anymore, because of how everybody is bustling. They're already bustled down the street as you've said "Hello."

During the early '80s, our culture decided that the opposite of the word "occupied" wasn't "relaxed" but "vacant" — as if time were space. Maybe that's because people started using day-planners to map out every hour. Those day-planners made us feel like we had to fill each corner with the activity-equivalent of knickknacks in order to appear to have a life with no empty spaces.

We were counseled to manage our time instead of enjoy it. We organized our days into discrete productive units, checking off lists of tasks accomplished and goals met as if we had to prove ourselves to a cosmic parking lot attendant who would validate our life's ticket.

Not only was time like space, time was money: We became increasingly complicit in the idea the most important people had the least time to spend on the routines of ordinary life.

We made ourselves feel significant by believing that the busier we became, the more significant we were; the longer our to-do lists were, the more in-demand we were.

When was the last time, when you asked anybody what he or she were doing, was the answer "Not much," or even "Nothing"?

That would be unnerving, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you get suspicious? Who's up to nothing? You would immediately start to think that person was up to something.

The only people who say "nothing" when asked what they're up to are mastermind criminals, international spies and serial killers. You'd be tempted to call the FBI to look for duct-taped bodies in the basement or enriched uranium in the garage.

To be at the mercy of one's schedule is no better than being at the mercy of one's appetites, and it's not all that different: Despite protests to the contrary, we eat and schedule what we want, what we believe we need and what we hope will satisfy us. It's not out of our hands; it's under our control.

So from now on, if someone asks how I am, I'll say "I'm looking forward to summer," or "I'm just about to have a slice of anchovy pizza, so life couldn't be better" or something else specific and cheerful.

I will stop saying that I'm "buried with work," "up to my neck in deadlines" or "swamped." I will stop saying my days are "insane" "nuts" or "crazy busy"; I will, in fact, dismiss any adjectival phrase that reflects on my mental health or anyone else's.

I'll put a stop to what my friend Meg Pearson points out is the most common of humble-brags and I'll keep in mind what another pal, Helen Lukash, reminded me was Socrates caveat: "Beware the barrenness of a busy life."

Here's my new motto: Never be too occupied to be able to help the lady asking for the Cheerios.

Gina Barreca
The Hartford Courant
(TNS)

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Gina Barreca is a columnist for The Hartford Courant.

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