Productivity, Busy-ness, and Everything In Between

In between fear about my existence - or non existence as E.O. Wilson put it - another fear that I have is about productivity. I always have this fear that I am wasting a lot of my times. Idleness, or just me staring at the window doing nothing, I considered it as a crime. I am feeling some sense of accomplishment when I have my to do list done. Staying at home during pandemi now made me feel like I am missing out a lot. Like it is a biggest crime and it depressed me. It doesn't matter that Charles Duhigg said that the most important thing is the purpose, not the busy-ness, I want the busy-ness. I want the busy-ness sooooo bad. It doesn't matter that the book that I read said Darwin was a slacker - he need a lot of down time so he can think through ( his theories, I supposed), I ain't no Darwin and I still want my to do lists, and those lists to be checked. Even I feel the need to be productive in my hobbies, I always feel that I forgot to watering my flowers, that my plants is not as green as it supposed to be, that I haven't touch my ukulele for weeks, and I keep forgetting my 12 courses in Coursera. So many to do lists in my hobbies. 

They said the idea that work is virtuous and leisure is a crime is purely Puritan, and I don't know, I am not a Puritan, but yet I can't stop the feeling that I have to be busy. Bertrand Russell is the champion of idleness and oh how I worship him, but no, I need to be busy. So many things, so many things to be done. Busy-ness is an accomplishment, or is it? I don't know. My brain won't stop spinning. Sometimes I even dream of working.

I don't know. It just feels that like everybody - my time here is limited, and I think if I didn't get busy, I would be wasting my time here on earth. But the question is it really wasting time if our existence here on earth is just a mere coincidence? I already surrender to the fact that once when you are dead, people would forget about you. That perhaps thousand years from now, if you are making history like Bach, Nietzsche, or became President, all of the remembrance about you would be gone and the whole civilisation that kept us busy right now, won't be around. The sun would swallow the earth and the earth shall no more. Maybe we already move forward somewhere to another galaxy. Maybe we would just be extinct, just like that. So what am I actually trying to prove?

But still, I need to be busy. I HAVE TO BE BUSY. Though, I know, deep deep down, like Rilke, all of those busy-ness perhaps what stops me from enjoying the day, enjoying what I have now, because I am too busy thinking, trying to be something, I am too busy checking off my to do list that I forgot that today I hear a beautiful sound of a bird from outside of my window, that the curls of my son's hair is so beautiful, and oh he is so beautiful like a small greek god, lithe and fast and smart and perfect, and sometimes I didn't even have time to talk to him.

But still, I need to be busy because being busy stops me from feeling the void inside of me.