Busy or free?

Glance at a busy road and you see everyone rushing, a pedestrian to a cyclist to a motorist. Of course, every second person doesn’t definitely have a flight to catch! We don’t know why we are scampering but no one has patience. Forget the rush on the road, look how busy you are. Try to recollect when you could pursue the thing you like. We love so many things but run short of time for it. ‘Who has the time?’ is a refrain we have got used to hearing in the IT age.
What we are doing becomes immaterial. Being busy has become a sort of prerequisite, especially of the urban life. With a fierce competition around, many are engrossed in academics and professions. It’s a demanding life where no one is free. Forget students and professionals, housewives and maids, too, are racing against time. Being engrossed in our activities is fine but think; are we really busy or we pretend to be?
Busyness has become a parameter of success. We are not quite at ease saying we are free. In some way, we try hard to prove we are occupied. Busier we seem more successful we are considered. No one bothers to check what a busy person is actually doing. Can busyness be a yardstick to measure success?
Instead of how busy one seems, it’s better to see how far a person has reached. All successful people decide their priorities. Owing to their time management, they do justice to both, profession and family. They steer clear of all sorts of triviality. Busy or not, every move they make takes them forward. Do we say business tycoons like Ratan Tata or Narayan Murthy find time for social service or US president Barrack Obama for holidaying with his family because they’ve nothing better to do? They fix their priorities immaculately. That’s why let’s assess people in terms of their achievements and not busyness.
Being busy is very subjective as there is much more to it than what meets the eye. A person doing nothing could be engrossed in something very constructive. When one is busy ideating, the busyness need not reflect in action simultaneously.
On the contrary, people may appear busy but end up doing nothing at the end of the day. Being busy in attending parties, campus gossips and social networking is an exercise in futility. Even a housewife with poor management skills would have hardly any time on hand! Here manifest busyness is no indicator of latent inefficiency. So, all that is important is where one has reached and not how busy one looks.
This pseudo-busyness can take toll on relationships. Not being deft at time management, many people don’t find time for families and there’s a communication breakdown. To me, bringing things on track shouldn’t be difficult, if they are moving off-track that is. For us scribes, work stretches over 10 to 12 hours a day but in our family, we have an excellent communication. Fix the proprieties and rest assured.
Undue insistence on being busy could be a psychological problem. It’s not an encouraging sign when we feel uncomfortable doing nothing. It shows we aren’t quite happy with ourselves and sure of what we do or don’t do. We may be busy out of insecurity, for not being at peace with ourselves. Once at a party, on being asked if he had enjoyed the food, celebrated litterateur Gorge Bernard Shaw replied, “I enjoyed myself.” Here’s the key: let’s be happy in our own company…
- KanChan

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