We ask someone:
"How are you?"
"Busy," they say.
As though that were an emotion.
Somewhere along the way, busyness became more than a description of our diaries. It became a personality, a status symbol, perhaps even a small piece of evidence that our lives ought to be taken seriously.
We say we haven't had enough sleep.
We haven't read anything in months.
We haven't seen our friends for weeks.
We eat whilst working, answer messages whilst walking, and carry our phones into moments in which we were once simply alone.
And strangely, we sometimes recount all of this with a hint of pride.
Not because exhaustion is pleasant.
But because we have quietly learnt that being needed makes us important.
A full calendar suggests value.
A crowded inbox suggests relevance.
And an empty afternoon can somehow make us wonder whether we are doing enough with our lives.
Perhaps that is why, when life unexpectedly becomes quiet, relief is not always what arrives.
Sometimes it is guilt.
We sit down for an hour and immediately begin thinking of everything we could be doing instead.
We take a holiday and check our emails.
We put on a film and reach for our phones halfway through it.
Even rest now seems to require a business case.
"I need to recharge so I can be more productive."
As though rest is only allowed to exist if it promises to make us work better afterwards.
But what if not every hour needs a purpose?
What if a day does not have to be squeezed for everything it can possibly produce?
There is, perhaps, a difference between a full life and a busy one.
A full life may contain a great deal of work.
But it also has dinners that last longer than planned.
A friend who rings at an inconvenient time and somehow keeps you talking.
A morning in which nothing much happens.
A journey taken on foot even though driving would have been quicker.
Half an hour pleasantly wasted, with no measurable return whatsoever.
A busy life, meanwhile, can contain almost everything—
except us.
None of this means abandoning work or pretending responsibilities do not exist.
But every so often, it may be worth asking:
Am I busy because my life genuinely requires it?
Or because I no longer know how to feel valuable when I am not achieving something?
Because if our sense of worth disappears the moment we stop working,
perhaps all this time we have not been building a life.
Perhaps we have been building a CV.
— Malek Ayoub