Nowadays, it feels like everyone is always busy. Busy doing this, busy doing that. Busy working, busy studying, busy socializing, busy…. you get the point. I find myself telling people that “I’m just too busy”; but to be completely honest, I don’t think I really am that busy. I often tell people I’m busy as a substitute for saying, “I’m stressed and don’t want to add another obligation or commitment to my plate, and I’d rather spend my free time alone.” Realistically, I’m not busy enough to skip watching my favorite TV shows or rush through my morning routine. Sometimes, I even feel like I’m just saying I’m busy so that I can “fit in” with the culture of being busy—but I don’t understand that.
That shouldn’t be how our culture is.
We glorify the idea of being busy as if it means we are better than those who are not as busy. We glorify the idea of being “highly demanded” in the sense that we pride ourselves in having so many obligations to different things and different people. Being busy to the point of overwhelm, stress, anxiety, and frustration should NOT be glorified. In contemporary society, we talk so much about the importance of mental health and taking days off to take care of ourselves, yet we choose to celebrate this idea of drowning ourselves in obligations.
Maybe some people enjoy it. Maybe they enjoy the “hustle,” or whatever they want to call it to make themselves sound like they work harder than you. It’s one thing to be a workaholic and feel satisfaction in constantly working, but it’s another to fill up your schedule because you feel like if you don’t, you’re not doing enough. Regardless, even if you are a workaholic or you genuinely enjoy being busy, everyone needs to take a break every once in a while. You may need a break every week, I may need a break everyday—whatever the frequency is, we all need to stop and take a deep breath and just do absolutely nothing sometimes. It’s not healthy to constantly be thinking about what you need to do next or what you can check off your ten page long to-do list.
I mentioned earlier that I’m not that busy. I still stand by that, but don’t get me wrong—I have things to do, too. I’m taking more than a standard load of classes, I work ten hours a week (more or less), and I have personal projects on the side, but I hear other people tell me that they’re so busy all the time that I think to myself, “Wow, I must not be that busy. Maybe I should be doing more.” I fall into this cycle of comparing my schedule to other people’s and yeah, I guess maybe I really am not as busy as them. But when I think about it, I’m satisfied with my workload and I know that if I take more on, I won’t be as content with my life or be able to take care of myself as well. I have the tendency to react very poorly to stress to the point that it affects not only my mental and emotional well-being, but also my physical well-being. Last quarter, I had to go to the doctor every week for over a month and even found myself in the hospital because my immune system weakens so much due to stress that it fights off sickness very poorly. Anytime I get sick, if I’m also stressed, the sickness will be dramatically worsened and may take weeks or even months longer for me to fully recover– and I’m definitely not the only one who is like this.
Stress manifests itself through physical weakness and illness in plenty of people, so this idea of glorifying being busy is harmful to such a large portion of the population. Even if you don’t get impacted by stress physically, I’m sure that your mind will thank you for taking a few things off your plate. Society’s standards should not promote such a self-destructive characteristic, especially when we go out of our way to simultaneously praise healthy lifestyles. Being busy 24/7 is not healthy in any way, shape, or form. We need to stop comparing our lives to others and forget the idea that if we’re not working all the time or sacrificing sleep to fit in extra obligations, we will not be as successful as those who do. In fact, I’d argue that having some free time would actually enable us all to be more productive during the times that we do have work to get done or commitments to fulfill.
And on top of that, hopefully, we can all learn to appreciate the value of relaxation and happiness and glorify self-care as much as we have come to glorify being busy.