An endemic disease that has been ravaging humanity for ages, a state of having lots of things to do or not being idle (busy).
Humanity has been battling this for a very long time, so much so busyness has become a part of our lives. All through human existence till date, man has always been busy keeping himself busy, he is either busy doing something or nothing at all. Despite the dilemma man has found himself in, which is as old as man himself, it has never been recognized as a problem detrimental to the efficiency and productivity of man. You will never find busyness as a type of disease listed by any of the health organizations on their websites, blogs, magazines or brochures. It will not even make the front page of the dailies, and neither will it be mentioned by your doctor as a serious problem you need to work on. Our religious organizations hardly mention it, our schools kind of support it in a way, yet, its damaging effect keeps ricocheting throughout every phase of human endeavor.
It is so sad nowadays because we hardly have the chance to do some qualitative thinking or reasoning the moment we are caught up in this busyness of a thing. We have become very busy that we even go around with different to-do lists writing down every bit as the task pops up in our cranium and ticking the checkboxes that instant the job is done.
Taking a deeper look into this issue, one can even take busyness as a way out of idleness, a state people don’t want to be acquainted with. The saying “An idle mind is a devil’s workshop” makes occupying that state of idleness unenviable and universally detestable. Nobody wants to be seen as a worthless slouch who does nothing but hang around doing nothing. Everyone wants to be valued, respected and loved and so on. So we engage ourselves in varying activities just to serve and save ourselves from the hostility shown towards the lazy fellows.
“We are so consumed with the necessary obligations that are to be fulfilled, like our families, kids, careers, friends, and environment. We literally have become an active slave to activities so much so we think that it is what we have been called to do. We even at times neglect the peace of mind, sacrificing it at the altar busyness just for some cash at hand.”
I remember someone asking me a few days ago about what I was up to, and trust me the response was the same old anthem of being “extremely busy” with lots of things to do. Each and every one of us is guilty of this. However the main purpose of this article is not so one could stop being busy, but right at the epicenter of this busyness circus, we all would sit to think, spend some time alone to reminisce on the past.
Our present age has provided for us the advancement in technology and also has altered our way of imagining things. One of the goals of technology is to make available to human-relevant solutions at the speed of thought, however, the same technology has compounded our woes by keeping us up with information both useful ones and junks which keeps us glued to our phone and computer screens all day. We hardly let the phone out of our hands and our fingers have become a witness to the modern day crime which has got everybody pleading guilty.
Our goals and plans in life are to move forward, but we can’t do that without assessing our past successes and failures, our high and low points. Those times when we made dangerous choices and simple ones, with the side effects tearing us apart from the inside out. There is a need for us to sit and think even if it is for few minutes every day to remind ourselves of how valued we are to be alive not just to our environment, but first to ourselves.
We were not created to be like the pollen grains viewed under a microscope wandering “busying” around in a zigzagged manner (Brownian motion) by our involvement in everything we see fit, neither are we to live our lives based on chances. Everything up until this moment has not been by chance, rather as a result of the varying decisions we’ve made over time with the knowledge we possessed during those periods of time in our lives.
I do believe we are all here for a reason. As much as I find it very difficult to not want to believe in a higher power, I find it very pleasing, my decision to believe in divinity which has quenched the longing of my soul for something, someone greater than itself. That on its own which is a problem has been solved and has left me with fewer things to think about like career, choice of who to marry, where to live, type of car to buy, where to travel for vacation and so on. But even in the midst of all these, one could get lost trying to figure out what to do and what not to do.
As much as we have to get busy every day of our lives, let’s endeavor to not get lost ourselves in the ocean of obligations screaming out to us for attention. We are born to die and we only get to live once #YOLO.
Get busy doing the right thing, you are treasured, you are of great worth, you had better see it that way else the world around you will tell you otherwise.