> Being busy all the time can give us an illusion of productivity which may feel reassuring

> You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are continually flowing on,” supposedly said Heraclitus. Time is like a river. If you’re too busy to enjoy life—too busy to spend time with friends and family, too busy to learn how to paint or play the guitar, too busy to go on that hike, too busy to cook something nice for yourself—these moments will be gone, and you will never get that time back

> Being busy is a defense mechanism. It’s a way to avoid just—being. Having responsibilities, deadlines, a long task list… Overloading our senses can make us believe we are moving in the right direction, or a list in a direction. But the constant cycle of tasks we tackle without ever thinking often leaves us stagnant

Having grown up in a "developing" country (India) with its high mortality and having suffered the emotional trauma of losing family members, friends and coworkers, unexpectedly , gives a perspective about life.

Having been battered to near death for starting small businesses that threatened established ones in the state I grew up in, gives a perspective about life.

Having been put at gun point, shackled to a post in a kneeling position by the mafia of another state I moved to, to start businesses, away from my home state (where they knew who my family was and could kill them), gives a perspective about life.

And that perspective is - there is abisolutely NOTHING like family and friends. No, not the fake ones. The real ones who open up their own homes, in the face of danger when you're battered, bleeding, destitute and broken.

Which is why, when I moved to the U.S., the obsession with "start up" success at the expense of anything else was/is extremely fascinating!

People want to be successful. No one likes to lose. Even a freeloader is expressing that behavior because they believe that is the best way to win.

The work life "balance" in the U.S. is incredibly messed up - like real bad.

The assumption most people make is "Let's work real hard while we are young so we have all the money we need when we are older. We will have fun then".

So right out of college, with six figures in debt, people are working 40+ hours/week (typically 60+ hours/week), working weekends without blinking an eye.

Everyone's doing it, it's the norm, so what's wrong with doing what everyone is doing.

No one has time to make meaningful relationships.

Most people spend less than 3 years at a job, so what's the point anyways. You can't get a good salary hike without quitting your existing and joining a new company.

That model bleeds into one's personal life as well - people are so busy working hard that they miss the opportunities to build a meaningful relationship with their spouse and children.

Guilt sets in so the spouse and children get showered with expensive gifts and vacations but they have nothing much to talk about during those vacations either so they spend most of their time visiting random places, taking tons of photos, posting them on social and handling the barrage of comments they get for those photos, which again steals time from whatever chance was left of having a private conversation.

The emptiness does not resolve though - and when it gets intolerable the spouses file for divorce.

Maybe it will work out with someone else.

Once they retire - they have two big problems:

1. yes, they do have money, but don't know what to do with it

2. they also don't know what to do with the free hours they now have available!

To address #1, they hand over their money to fund managers who proceed to loose all or most of that money because they are sure they can beat the market.

In the meantime, they have been so frigging busy most of their adult life with the one thing they did for their employers that they did not develop social skills (outside the fake "professional" facade) or general skills that they can use to improve their own lives outside the work context - and everyone's so fake that it gets down under your skin because deep inside you can feel the fakeness so you hesitate to make more social ties.

Now, with the money depleted and being bored out of their minds, what's the next step?

So yes, it does feel to me that here in the U.S., being busy is a defense mechanism - because it's a good excuse for procrastinating on what really matters.