It was a free afternoon when, in truth, nothing more was being asked of me. The things that needed to be done were finished, no one was waiting for a reply, and there were no appointments for the next few hours. I could simply have sat down. But the moment that open space appeared, my mind began to fill it. There was a drawer that really could do with being sorted. A message that was not urgent. An idea I could read a little more about. Within minutes, I had turned a free afternoon back into a task. Not because any of those things were especially important, but because I found it surprisingly difficult to leave a moment genuinely unoccupied. That observation stayed with me. I stopped asking only why we have so much to do. Suddenly, something else interested me: ‘Why do we so often feel comfortable only when we have something to do?’
Being busy gives my day a clear shape. As long as there is a task in front of me, I know what comes next. I do not have to ask whether the moment has any purpose because the activity has already given it one. There is a beginning, an outcome and often even the small satisfaction of having completed something. Free time does not have that same clarity. It places nothing in front of me by which I can orientate myself. That is precisely why it can feel strangely open. I am no longer the person who is completing, solving, organising or achieving something. For a moment, that familiar role is missing. Perhaps being busy is therefore not only a way of dealing with tasks. It can also be a way of continually giving ourselves a function.
I have noticed in myself how closely this functioning can be connected with the feeling of being worth something. A full day can easily create the impression of being needed. When people are waiting for my replies, when something cannot move forward without me, or when I can see at the end of the day what I have created, there is little doubt that I have filled my place. At first, that sounds harmless, and in many ways it is. Work, responsibility and creating things are, for me, part of a fulfilled life. It only becomes more difficult when rest no longer feels like a natural part of life, but like something that has to be earned. Then I rest only once enough has been done, and enough is a remarkably movable target. There is almost always something else that could be done first.
The way we live today makes this movement even easier. There are hardly any gaps left that truly have to remain empty. While I am waiting somewhere, I can read messages. While walking, I can make a phone call. A video plays while I eat, a podcast while I tidy up, and even before falling asleep there is still something I can watch or answer. I do not see this as inherently problematic. I use many of these possibilities myself. What concerns me more is how rarely I am forced to be alone with an unstructured moment because of them. There used to be stretches of time that could be nothing other than waiting. Today, even three spare minutes can become productive, informative or entertaining. The world has not only given us more possibilities. It has also made it far less necessary for us to experience what a moment feels like when nothing new is being added to it.
This is where the more personal side of being busy begins for me. When things become quiet, everything does not automatically become peaceful. The opposite can happen. A thought I easily brushed aside during the day suddenly returns. A decision I have been postponing for weeks is given space. Tiredness can no longer be ignored. Feelings for which there is no quick solution can also be remarkably easy to accommodate in a full day because something is always getting in the way. I have found in my own experience that busyness can sometimes lie over such things like a soft blanket. It does not remove anything, but it muffles it. As long as I keep going, I do not have to look too closely at what is waiting for me underneath all that movement.
For me, that does not mean assuming there is some repressed crisis behind every active person. Much of life is simply busy. There are periods when responsibility genuinely leaves very little free space. What interests me is that additional movement I create for myself even when it is not actually necessary. When, after an exhausting week, I finally have nothing I need to do and immediately become restless. When I fill a break with a guilty conscience. When I catch myself suddenly making something trivial feel urgent simply so that I do not have to sit there doing nothing. I find these small moments more revealing than any grand theory about why we keep ourselves busy. They show me that activity does not always arise only from demands. It can also arise from the difficulty of being with ourselves when there is no task to perform.
Our relationship with time plays a part in this too. I know the thought of not wanting to waste a day. It sounds reasonable and can even be motivating. But what actually counts as wasted? A day in which nothing was created? An afternoon without an outcome? An hour in which I simply sat somewhere and let my thoughts wander? The longer I think about it, the more I realise how strongly I have unconsciously linked the value of time with visible use. Having completed something can be spoken about. A quiet afternoon often leaves no result that can be shown. Perhaps that is precisely why we dismiss it so easily. It leaves behind no achievement that we can justify to ourselves or to anyone else.
Here, too, I recognise much of I – Your Best Liar. For me, self-deception does not reveal itself only in believing something false. It can also lie in giving a behaviour a more convincing explanation than the one underneath it. I tell myself that I am simply hardworking when I am really avoiding an uncomfortable thought. I explain that something still needs to be done when I am already exhausted. I call it a sense of responsibility when part of me is afraid of what it might feel like not to be needed for once. That does not make the explanation entirely false. That is precisely why it works so well. Our inner stories often contain enough truth for us not to have to look at the other half.
Over time, this has changed the way I see free time. I experience it less as the opposite of a fulfilled life and more as a space in which it becomes visible how I am with myself when nothing outside me is defining my role. That is not always pleasant, nor is it always profound. There are genuinely boring hours. But there is something liberating in that too. Not every moment has to be meaningful. Not every pause has to lead me to some insight. There can be time that produces nothing. And perhaps there is something within that apparent uselessness that we easily lose when we are constantly busy: the experience that our life continues even when, for a moment, we do not have to perform, improve or hold on to anything.
Even today, I still notice how quickly my mind wants to fill a free hour. The difference is simply that I recognise the impulse more often now. Then I see the untidy drawer, think of the message I could write, and know at the same time that both can wait. For a moment, the time genuinely remains empty. And it is precisely then that a very simple question sometimes appears, one that barely gets a chance beneath all the tasks: ‘If no one needs anything from me right now and nothing has to be done, can I still simply be here?’