Thursday Traffic | 14 October

I've been a bit busy these past couple weeks working on some things. That explains my lack of blogging and my sudden interest in "busy-ness". See, many people today lead very busy lives. Some are busy in five hour meetings that would have served better as a ten-minute pow-wow around a water cooler. A few others are busy complaining about how busy they are. Others are busy looking busy so that no one suspects that they aren't busy. In fact, being busy is something that is almost expected of us.

Have you heard that saying, "An idle mind is the devil's workshop"? I must disagree. First of all, what most of us are busy doing does not matter in the long run. The things that people nearly kill themselves to accomplish could be completed at a normal pace and still yield the same results. Secondly, while it is excellent to be engaged in projects for the health of your mind, being too busy causes stress and can result in more harm than good. Third, there is no need to be so busy that we are not able to spend time with our friends, family and other people that matter to us.

So are you too busy to take a moment and breathe? If so, don't pat yourself on the back and do a victory dance. Instead, reflect on where your time went and how it was spent. We live in a fast-paced society nowadays. We no longer have to wait two weeks or more for a letter to reach a friend overseas (then, an additional amount of time to receive a response). The convenience of cell phones, modern agriculture and packaging, the internet and transportation have revolutionized our way of life. Because of this, I believe that we shouldn't be as busy—if anything, we should have more time to spend doing things that we like instead of busy work.

What do you think?

Photo via flickr/Techne