Why is it that some people feel an almost obsessive need to tell you of how busy they are, how sought after, how popular? An old friend of mine, someone I was at college with, is one such person. I am very fond of her, if only because of our long association, but every time I meet her, I find myself both bored and irritated by her breathless recital of all that she has fitted into her day.
The truth is that this friend, whom I shall call Meera, though this is not her real name, is one of those compulsively busy people, perpetually short of time. I rather think, perhaps uncharitably, that much of this is of her own making. With her husband?s transfer to another city, I see less of her but I hear from her regularly and always by snail mail. Every letter I receive invariably ends in a rush. ?As usual in great haste, have a dozen things to attend to,? she will scrawl or ?no time to read this through ? forgive mistakes.? The letters are as frenzied as their endings. ?Life has been unbelievably hectic,? she will say, before embarking on a tedious account of all that has occupied her over the week. There have been visits, dinner parties attended and given, shopping sprees, business trips with her husband, mornings devoted to social work. ?There are so many demands on my time,? she complains ?I find it impossible to fit everything in.?
When she is in town and drops in, she is caught up in the same buzz of busyness that seems to accompany her everywhere. ?I can?t stay for more than a few minutes,? she will say before she has even sat down, ?I have a 100 things to do.? And having said that, and made her point, she will settle down for a couple of hours!
So why does Meera behave in this manner? Is it because she is really busy? Or are her efforts at frantic occupation due, not to being engaged in important work, but to a pathological need to fill in her hours ? Does she want less to save time than to fill it? Why, when a simple telephone call will elicit some information she needs, does she undertake a long, arduous and time-consuming journey to get it? Why, when a little note of explanation to a neighbour will release her from a heavy social morning, does she actually go over to explain that she cannot stay? Is it just a question of bad time management or is it a deliberate attempt to stretch out her chores so that she can convince herself that she is busy?
Or is it that Meera feels guilty about wasting her time in doing precisely nothing, and hopes that by being perpetually `busy?, nobody will notice? And talking of feeling guilty, are my rather acid views due to the fact that she makes me feel guilty at having so much time to spare in which to enjoy myself?
