The other day, my mother called and I picked up the phone. This is noteworthy because I don’t usually pick up the phone when anyone calls me, not even my mother, because I’m a very busy person whose life is full of many busy things. But I picked up the phone, and she asked me what I was up to, and I said that I was very busy with work and work-related fancy cocktail New York activities. The fact of the matter is that I was sitting pantsless on the edge of my tub trying to shave my legs with mushed up banana instead of shaving cream. But I told her I was busy, and I assumed that she’d understand that “busy” implied “with important things,” because telling people that you’re busy and overworked and pretending that your life is a mental endurance test is part of our understood patriotic duty as Americans.
There’s been a lot of talk about being too busy lately. In a piece for the Times this weekend, Tim Kreider argued that the “I’m busy” pissing contest is actually a trap that makes Americans miserable. But their misery doesn’t come from actual fatigue of doing actual work; it’s a humblebrag designed to convince others that you are busy because you are constantly necessary to a large number of people. Your kids need you. Your friends need you. Your boss needs you. Your coworkers need you. In reality, he asserts, the stress that comes from being “too busy” is self-imposed and completely unnecessary, albeit socially inescapable. Idleness is a virtue that too many Americans are foregoing. Which is why Tim Kreider now writes from an undisclosed location in the middle of a giant meadow, where birds do his hair every morning. Bless him.
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