Are You Busy Or Happy?

“How have you been?”

“Staying busy.”

I’ve heard this conversation opener countless times, usually between middle-age people, but sometimes even among younger adults. At some point, it entered our psyche that busyness automatically equals or leads to happiness.

But how many of these uber-busy people spend most of their time alone or stressed out? If your response to how you’re doing is that you’ve been staying busy — without qualifications — you may want to ask why you’ve been staying busy?

What is the end goal of your busyness? And is that end goal so far into the future that by the time you reach it, you won’t have enough life left to make up for all the youth you whiled away being busy?

Many wear their busyness and activity as a badge of honor. The neighbors have activities for their kids seven days a week, so we’ve got to find some reason to load up the kids in the car every night too or it may look like they give their kids a better life than we do ours.

Maybe we don’t have kids, and other singles we know have every waking hour of their lives filled with work, education, and leisure. We feel that if we don’t stay just as busy we’re missing out.

Most people, however, don’t want a busy life. They want a happy life.