Virtual consciousness: The Cult of Being Busy

I recently published the following article in The Muslim News.

We find ourselves in a constant state of being busy, but without really seeming to achieve very much. Why are we obsessed with filling up every moment of our lives? Does our constant need to be listening, talking, watching or playing games mean we are missing out on what is really happening?

I haven't seen you for ages, I said to a friend of mine the other day. What have you been up to? She rolled her eyes, I've just been so busy, she wailed. So much to do, and I feel so tired all the time.

I know, I empathised, me too. What about you, what is it you've been doing? I asked again. You know, she responded, just running around like a crazy thing, work, family, work, it's just so hectic.

I still had no clue what she had actually been doing, other than engaging in "being busy", she was busying. It should be a proper verb and what she should have said was "I've been busying." That is, she had spent her time in the act of being busy just for being busy's sake with no tangible outcome or goal. Busying is to be busy simply for the sake of it. Busying has in and of itself become a respectable - nay essential and addictive - activity.

Modern life and attitudes seem to be built around the art of being occupied. "Always connected", "never out of touch", "one phone call away" "hear the news as it's being made". These are all phrases that influence our perceptions of how we should behave, how we should feel, how we should fill our time. We have no choice but to be constantly occupied, continuously engaging in activity, whether it has any value or not. I must be able to make a statement at any given time about what I am doing. And therefore being busy validates my existence as a 'normal' human being. To not be busy, is to be a loser.

It would be shameful today to admit that you had been doing nothing. In fact, most people simply wouldn't know how to relate to this. I took some time off after Eid, but chose not to go away on holiday. I returned to work and was asked about my break. It was fantastic, I told them. Oh yes, where did you go? Asked my colleague. Oh nowhere, I replied nonchalantly, didn't do anything. His face was a picture of incomprehension. Huh?

The current proliferation of digital radio, portable music players and mobile phones adds a new dimension to the fact that people feel they most be occupied all the time. Wherever you go, people are listening on their headphones to their music, to the radio, or are chatting away on their phones. People can't even wait for someone without filling nanoseconds of time by sending text messages or playing games on their gadgets.

A London commuter has finally had enough of people playing their music loudly on the bus and has started up a petition to ban this sort of behaviour, calling it anti-social. Rather, I find a carriage of distracted beings engrossed in being busy, a sad heartbreaking experience. Why do we feel the need to be constantly occupied in this way? Silence is no longer golden: it has become unbearable and therefore unacceptable.

Jack Straw spoke of the veil being a marker of separation. I find everyone walking around immersed with their phone, radio, music player, like impenetrable walking cocoons, far more divisive. There is no way to have interaction with these people, no possibility of saying hello, or striking up a conversation. They stare blankly, numbed into submission by what they are listening to, unable to stop the stream of input for fear of silence, of themselves.

You will know people who must always have the radio on, the TV on, be listening to something in the background, or speaking to someone, or playing with their mobile phone, or sitting at their computer. "Content" is the new buzz word, which means bits of information or education such as photos, videos, news clips, music and so on, that you can use to fill your time and savour. The technology industry is pushing content as the next big way to make money. Consumers are thought to want to be continuously occupied by content, and so the idea is to fashion content and its accessibility to meet the consumer's need without them even having to think about it. What consumers want, apparently, is a constant stream of tailored content to fulfil their interests and fill their time.

It feels like as a human being, I am being moulded into a receptacle whose sole function is to imbibe sensory input, and become paralysed with being busy, and absorbing - actively choosing to absorb - more and more stimuli. And on top of this, most of the stuff that we suck in through our eyes and ears, is total dross. If the music, radio, phone conversations were of any quality the argument might be different, but listen into any MP3 player around you, or any of the mobile phone calls, and most of it is pretty meaningless and redundant.

The constant need to have sensory input means that there is no appreciation of quiet, of rest, of simply being. People feel they must be distracted and can't bear to be alone with themselves. If you're getting something done, or even just relaxing, that's fine, but these activities seem to be not only to fill time, but more importantly to fill space. Why is this all so fashionable? Why do we plunge ourselves into the Cult of Being Busy? Why are we so addicted?

Ali, the cousin of the Prophet says, people are sleeping, they wake up when they die. Filling up our eyes and ears, fills up our hearts. We cannot see or hear what is really happening around us. We fritter our time away, and don't let our minds rest, reflect, and create.

The magic of periods like Ramadhan and hajj lies in the fact that being busy is replaced with time for quiet, reflection and activities with goals. We spend time reading Qur'an, in planning meals, in longer prayers. In hajj we abandon the distractions of clothing, of clockwatching, of the news, of telephones. Our reward is clarity in our vision, a re-prioritisation of what is important, and a sudden surge in the peace and progress that we make.

Creativity requires space, quiet and time, all of which we have snatched away from ourselves. To stop people moving forward, to stunt their creativity, the fastest way is to distract them with other activities. Busying is the nemesis to reflection, creativity and inspiration. Five minutes of quiet, of no distractions each day, can work wonders, and liberates the thoughts in your head. After a while, the stimuli become annoying and the quiet becomes addictive.

Prayer was designed to break the addiction, to create time to connect, to reflect, but even this is often squeezed in between other kinds of busying. If you can wake up in the early morning to pray fajr, the dawn prayer, most people comment on the clarity they feel. Busy-ness doesn-t get a look in, because in the quiet of the morning there is no interference from music, radio, TV, newspapers or phonecalls. There is, literally, peace and quiet. More accurately, what is to be found is peace through the quiet.

It seems that we in the postmodern age are hiding from something. Hiding from the possibility of being better, from exploring ourselves. A few minutes without any outside sensory input can work wonders, can open unknown possibilities. But it takes a conscious decision to stop being busy just for being busy's sake.