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In the several years I spent recovering from my accident, I never stopped wondering about the choices I had made in the moments leading up to my accident. In recent years, I’ve become even more determined to better understand why I had created a lifestyle based on perpetual doing and achieving instead of listening. Recently I found some reassurance in a New York Times article by Tim Kreider. In “The Busy Trap,” he suggests that “Busyness serves as kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.” Kreider further suggests that the busyness epidemic began in the twenty-first century and affects everyone, even children. He asserts that no one is immune from this malady, and states that the reason we make our lives busy is that we want the reassurance we are good enough and doing enough, something we often feel when we are busy and focused on achievements. And so, we keep choosing busy. When we become adults, we feel more pressure to succeed, to attend prestigious colleges, marry, have children, earn a good income, all while maintaining friendships. We take on more responsibilities, set higher goals, collect more material items, holding the belief that we are achieving success. Before we know it, we are making choices that keep us perpetually preoccupied and productive and busy.
