Busy Bee

Yesterday was one of those days. I was literally working all day, but didn't actually manage to get any work done for classes. Hundreds of pages sat unread on my desk as I went about meeting with advisors about summer program options, editing articles and laying out the newspaper, going to a lecture about writing, and going back to lay out the newspaper again.

In the midst of all this, I got a text message from my friend, who runs the student café on campus. She asked me whether I could run back to her room and get her more comfortable shoes. She was wearing boots with small high heels and she was uncomfortable.

While this seems like a relatively small demand to make, it bothered me immensely. Besides the fact that she knew she was working and therefore should've worn more comfortable shoes from the get-go, was she really so incredibly busy that she couldn't step out for 10 minutes to get shoes? Did she think that what I was busy doing (which was something, as no one is too idle on this campus) wasn't as important as what she was doing?

There was a New York Times op-ed a few months ago that talked about the United States having a vast culture of "busyness." People have a sense that if they're "busy," they're being productive, they are important. This culture is more than visible on this campus. In fact, faculty often jokes around that we shouldn't play misery poker – a game to determine who's most miserable of all, who has more work, more things to do.

The problem is that this 'busyness' is self-made. Just like my friend could've definitely stepped out of the student café for 10 minutes (because no one is really that essential to the function of this café that if they are gone for more than a second it would crumble down to pieces), most of the busyness we feel is created out of a need to feel productive and needed.

I'm guilty of it too. It's impossible to feel any kind of self-worth in a culture like Swarthmore's without over-working yourself. You can't feel important without at least once beating everyone in the room in misery poker. It's as ironic as it is pathetic.

I don't know how to change it, and I'm not sure I can. I just know that when my friend texted me, I had a feeling she thought that nothing I could be doing would be as important as what she was doing – That no place that I was in could need me as much as that café needs her. And it was unpleasant. Not just because it's not true, but because no one wants to feel that what they're doing is not worthwhile. We might have trouble understanding people's extended commitments to things we find unimportant or uninteresting, but that doesn't mean they are. Most of all, we shouldn't make our own self-importance make other people's self-importance seem not important at all.