The Privilege of Being Busy

 Business (busy-ness) is an aspect of life that I have been experiencing more lately in the past couple of weeks. It has made me realize that I value a busy life, one in which I have a supply of tasks to complete, and work to do. The quality of having work is beneficial in my opinion, because its presence enables the productivity that fills my day. These days, my TODO list is almost bursting at the seams with tasks from school, and from elsewhere. Sometime or another, I have something to do, and when I am not working, it is rarely because there is no work to be done, but perhaps because I am taking a break, or procrastinating, or something of the sort.

It makes a difference, too, that I find the work meaningful. If the work were of an empty sort, such as moving a pile of bricks from one side of a yard to the other, and then back, and then to the side again, and back again, and so forth (though I suppose it could be argued that such work is a meaningful form of exercise, though otherwise seemingly devoid of much value to the mind and body), I feel that such work would cease to keep its value, and that the days would no longer feel so satisfying. However, when the work does have meaning, such as the homework that is given me for new subjects, projects, or studying for tests, I have the assurance that the time I invest in its completion is rewarded by some growth of mind/knowledge, sharpening of a skill, or development of a certain personality trait through experience.

Going to bed after a hard day's worth of work provides a certain peace of mind, that is hard to match by any other means, such as through that of empty entertainment and dedication of one's time to deceptively meaningful tasks, such as crossing a level in a video game, which at face value offers a reward--that of reaching the next level, but one that holds a much lower priority with respect to the amount of time dedicated to it. Thus, spending one's entire day playing such a video game is not an effective use of time, because though perhaps its pursuit would yield return in the realm of that video game, or in a certain class of video games, or perhaps even for video games in general, the meaning that it provides (a quantification that can sometimes be rationalized, but other times inexplicably communicated to one's conscious mind from the depths of the subconscious) is relatively low, and simply not worth the investment of time compared to the other, more meaningful tasks one should dedicate oneself to.

So, it is in this meaningful work that satisfaction is drawn, and a sense of contentment is achieved, and a realization of the inherent value in life is achieved--rather than through idle expectance of this vague, intractable notion of meaning. I believe it to absolutely true (and thank goodness for that) that such meaningful work is not achieved easily, nor consistently, but when it is achieved, it is the consequence of dedication of one's effort and mental faculties to the work being pursued. I say "thank goodness" for the nature of meaningful work to be not easy because I believe that fundamentally our contentment only arises and can only arise from the achievement of that which we know to be un-easy; if meaningful work were easy, then I would begin to question the value of such work to a much greater extent, and would be in want of true challenges that do not let the effusive fountain of motivation go dry.