Being Busy Doesn’t Mean You’re Interesting
You know it’s bad when you need an app to breathe.
As far as lifelong dreams go, I’m lucky enough to have a pretty mundane one.
However, each time I’m thinking about it, something strikes me as odd.
I’m building towards someday moving to a somewhat secluded place, having a nice house and a yard big enough for my dog, planting my own food, waking up at sunrise to take care of the animals, so on and so forth.
My dream life resembles a lot the life my parents fought really hard to escape. So much, it becomes uncanny.
And it’s not just me, working towards this life. I see it in my boyfriend, my brothers, my friends, my co-workers, in random people I meet.
It became the long-life aspiration for a lot of people my age— not limited to the borders of my country, as it seems to be the deepest desire of an entire generation.
What baffles me is that it’s just the Pinterest version of the life our grandparents lived: living off the land, surviving, never striving.
It wasn’t an easy life, it was agonizing at times, being at the mercy of something as fickle as the weather.
And yet, we yearn for this simple life.
Have we already lived such full lives that we’ve gone full circle? Or are we simply done with the comforts of modern society?
I think about Christmas and the usual go-around of this holiday back home: we wake up, eat, hang out, eat, hang out, sleep, eat again, then turn in for the night. Lather, rinse, repeat.
And this doing nothing thingy drives both me and my brothers crazy.
It’s boring, yes, but it’s also unnerving: how can one spend so much time doing absolutely nothing?
Now, I’m not saying that this cycle of eat-sleep-repeat is in any way healthy, mind you.
But the easiness with which my parents just let time fly amazes me. Whereas me and other people in my generation are going stir crazy at the mere thought of wasted time.
Due to the political context in my country, we are quite literally the first generation who grew up in a time when anything is possible. We were raised to grasp every opportunity and never settle.
We were also taught to be over-achievers, to strive for excellence, be the best.
While it’s all in good heart and with pure intentions, where has this brought us?
I get to live everyday, feeling like I’m always just postponing something.
There’s always something that has to be taken care of.
Time spent commuting to work can be spent organizing my tasks for the day, time spent having breakfast can be spent catching up with the news, time spent in the smoke breaks can be spent thinking about the next task.
Time is always spent, but time is never earned.
We’re basically blowing through our savings and we’re just taking and taking and taking.
You have to eat healthy, relax, get better at your job, be an interesting person, have hobbies, party, watch that controversial movie, clean your house, talk to your family, spend quality time with your partner, create, be an exciting person, try out new things, be present, get out of your comfort zone, be mindful, practice self care, have sex, be part of your community, clean your body, be productive, travel, network, learn new things, be creative, discover new things, work out, get promoted, earn more…
Live a fast life, live a meaningful life, live a proud life, take advantage of your life, it’s ride or die.
And it’s…exhausting.
This culture of over achieving, over-working, writing the next rock-opera, while taking a dump is absolutely nerve-wracking.
Our brains have somehow tricked us into thinking a busy person is an interesting person. We’ve rewired our bodies to never settle and our internal clocks to run on fast-forward.
We’re making ourselves scarce on purpose, because we don’t want to look too eager, too available.
We glamorize the idea of not having any free time, of having a hundred hobbies and a billion projects, of being too busy to hang out…and for what?
We’re putting our bodies and our minds under excruciating standards, because who wants to be that person that hasn’t got anything going on?
No wonder we just want to go live on top of a mountain.
The thing with productivity guilt is that it’s an actual thing. Look it up.
And when an affliction becomes so common and so present, that doctors have to find a medical term for it… it means we somehow took a wrong turn while we were becoming fully functioning adults.
And I’m starting to believe it’s too late for us to come back on the right track and learn to give ourselves a break and to breathe.
