Ardain Isma
CSMS Magazine
We live in a society that celebrates being busy. From the moment we wake up, many of us check phones, answer messages, prepare for work, care for family members, or think about everything we must accomplish before the day ends.
Productivity has become so deeply connected to success that simply doing nothing can sometimes make us feel guilty. But an important question deserves our attention: Are we becoming too busy to actually live?
Technology was supposed to make life easier and give us more free time. Instead, it has often made us more accessible. Let’s face it. First, emails we were supposed to handle at work follow us home. Next, there is social media that steals our quiet moments. Moreover, notifications interrupt conversations, meals, relaxation, and even sleep. In other words, something is always demanding our attention.
When we talk about personal space, we’re not simply referring to physical distance from other people. It is also the emotional and mental space we need to think, reflect, rest, and reconnect with ourselves. When every hour is scheduled and every quiet moment is filled with a screen, we may lose opportunities to understand how we are actually feeling.
Making time for ourselves doesn’t require an expensive vacation or disappearing from our responsibilities. Personal space can be as simple as drinking a cup of coffee without checking the phone, taking a quiet walk, reading for pleasure, sitting outdoors, gardening, listening to music, exercising, praying, meditating, or simply enjoying fifteen minutes of silence.
The problem is that many people treat personal time as something they can have only after everything else is finished. Yet there will always be another email to answer, another chore to complete, another appointment to schedule, or another problem requiring attention. If we wait until life becomes completely quiet, we may wait forever.
Perhaps we may need to reconsider what it exactly means to use our time wisely. A productive day should not only be measured by how many tasks we complete. Time spent resting, thinking, laughing, connecting with loved ones, or enjoying our own company has value too.
We cannot fully experience life when we are constantly rushing toward the next obligation. Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do is create space in our schedules for ourselves.
The question, then, is not whether we have enough time. We all receive the same twenty-four hours. The deeper question is how much of that time have we deliberately reserved for simply being alive?
Note: This article follows episode 2 of the new rubric we have started in The Conversation.
You can watch the video below.
