Our Age or Our Society?

"Hey Mitch, how's it going?" a random friend asks.

"Busy" I reply.

You have just read the opening lines of approximately 75% of all my conversations.

"How about you? What's doing with you?" I query back to my random friend.

"I'm very busy too."

And so ends the second verbal exchange of those same conversations.

Question: What ever happened to "Fine", and when did we all become so busy? 

You might think I have a good excuse for being busy. After all, I'm married with kids and a house. But I have the "I'm busy" conversation with plenty of single people too. Why are we all so busy? Is it our age? Is this just what happens to people over thirty? Do we get busier as we get older? Or is it our society? Has the gluttonous American way of life produced a society in which all the people are so overwhelmingly inundated with stuff to do that we no longer feel we have enough time? This is what we'll be trying to figure out.

Saying it's our age is the obvious first choice, and there is tremendous evidence to support the claim. Let's look carefully at all the things that happen to us as we get older that could be making us more busy. One of the first things that happens to us as we get older is that we leave home. Sometime between fifteen and thirty, most kids leave the comfort of the parent's nest and venture out on their own. Right away you're screwed with the addition of mandatory tasks like cooking, cleaning, laundry, and extinguishing small kitchen fires. Your job, of course, is another major time suck. At some point most of us leave school (Note the word 'most' Larry) and join the working class. This immediately wipes out forty hours a week, or perhaps more for you over achievers. Then there's the extra work related tedium like commuting, doing your taxes, and all the court time required for you sexual harassment law suit (you are the defendant of course). After a few years of renting, it's time to buy your own place. Now this is when you're transformed from an mere amateur busy person to a hard core professional. Now you've got to deal with countless repair projects, do it yourself home improvement projects, yard work, more bills, more taxes, and court time for the liability lawsuit (you, of course, are the defendant). And now that you own a place, you're obliged to host lots of parties and at least one summer barbecue. Of course, everyone you know is also hosting at least one summer barbecue, so now you've got something to do every weekend during the summer. Too busy yet? I hope not, because we're just getting going.

Each day we're alive takes us places and brings us in contact with countless other people. For many of us, this contact eventually leads to a relationship, followed by romance, and the eventual, inevitable, marriage. Marriage is another one of those things that makes you go "Man, I thought I was busy before, but...". Now you single folks might be wondering how just simply being married can take away free time. Simple. All your mandatory tasks are multiplied by two. You now have twice as much cooking, cleaning, laundry, bills, taxes, and shopping. But you've also got two (or more) sets of parents you now need to spend time with, and in many people's case, two sets of religious holidays to observe. And if that's not enough, people our age are getting married like there's no tomorrow, and each of them will require your attendance at their wedding (you'll have to miss someone's summer barbecue for that). And finally, there's the ultimate time eraser, kids.  You could easily not do any of the things we already talked about but still have kids, and you would still not have enough time in your day. And kid time is unpredictable. All the things we've discussed so far are known quantities in that they tend to be scheduled events (except maybe for the kitchen fires). But kids don't much care about your schedule. They need you when they need you, and they pretty much always need you. They can actually absorb virtually any free time you might have had and then proceed to take time away from all the other things as well. After all, kids aren't just a collection of mandatory tasks. Children require that you actually spend quality time with them or they grow up emotionally void and shoot up a McDonalds later in life. Since my first child was born, the song "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin plays in my head continuously.

So age has already taken away all of our time, but we're not done with this topic yet. There's also thousands little of ways our age screws us. I wake up slower, walk slower, and think slower. I have dozens of things to do when I wake up and go to bed just to keep me alive, and I even take longer on the toilet (although still not as long as Mikey). The list goes on and on.  

Now, some of you you may have read up to this point and are saying "Hey, I'm not that old and half of these things don't even apply to me, plus I'm pretty fast in the bathroom. But I'm still really busy. What's up with that?" And that, my random friend, brings us to our society.

My parents were thirty, married, owned a home and had kids, but I don't recall them bitching about free time like I do. Of course, I was like five at the time so maybe they did and I don't remember. Or maybe they just whine less than I do. But maybe, just maybe, there's something else to it. Maybe our society and the twenty first century life style we all lead is contributing to our dilemma.  The American way of life is an ever expanding pool of gluttony where we want everything to be bigger, better, and faster. The nation's economic growth has turned into our own personal economic growth which only feeds our insatiable hunger for more. We are lifestyle addicts, and ironically, our contemporary lives find everything expanding except for one important thing, time. I should add that I am not pointing a finger at anyone here and saying "Bad person!". How could I? I am about the worst example of this affliction.

Our "living large" attitude affects each of us in different ways but it all comes from the same basic instinct, we want more. Our generation has never known serious hardship and as a result, takes the fact that we are the richest, freest, safest, best fed, most comfortable, and longest living people in the entire world completely for granted. We naturally assume that all these gifts are our God given birth rite and simply carry on with our quest for more. Our desire to "keep up with the Joneses" has given us a society where we socially and materialistically leapfrog each other into oblivion. (Now you know why it's called Mitch's soapbox).

But enough preaching. Let's get back to the point. How does our society make us so busy? For some, it's all about money. They start a career, simple as can be. But after a while, the desire for cold hard cash causes them to seek out better paying jobs higher on the corporate ladder, and with each new job, they have to work harder and longer, and often have to commute farther. Until eventually, they're commuting two hours each way by train to get to their 12 hour a day high stress job... but the pay is great. The one thing these folks have going for them as far as time goes is that they can usually afford to pay someone to do a lot of the other time consuming tasks the rest of the people have to do themselves.

Another trait of modern society keeping us busy is the great big house. My folks raised two kids just fine in a three bedroom ranch, so what do I need this big place for? Because that's where our society is going. People everywhere are getting bigger and bigger homes, and with these homes comes the inevitable home projects, also ever increasing in size. One example is the deck. The first thing many homeowners I know do after they get their house is to build a massive deck (you need this to host the aforementioned summer barbecues). But it seems that each new deck is always bigger and more complex than the one someone else built last year. And of course, after the deck comes the swimming pool or the shed, and who knows what else (we're still a few years away from the swimming pool at our house, but we're working on it). A home, after all, is a bottomless pit of improvement projects, enough to keep anyone busy for the rest of their lives.

Of course, not everyone on earth is in it for the big check or the house. But those people are usually the ones who are single and trying to live their lives to the fullest, another twenty first century value. Thirty years ago, there were not nearly as many wild and outrageous ways of entertaining ourselves, and yet the human race managed to survive. But today, we bore easily. That's why we take up all kinds of thrilling hobbies like rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, skydiving, flying, canoeing, and yacht racing just to name a few. Each of these activities require serious commitments of time and money. And of course, to afford all that gear, we have to work more, and you know where that takes us. I could go on and on discussing society's pressures on our free time, but I realized how long this thing is getting so I'd better close it out.

So which one is it, our age or our society? As you might have expected, it's both. It's our age that centers us in the most hectic time of the human life cycle, but it's our society that makes it that way. After all, if I was twenty three, single, and living at home, I'd have lots of free time even with my career and many hobbies. But, I could still have copious free time in my present age and family situation. All I need to do is take an easier job, move to a smaller house, and stop all my costly leisure time activities. Of course, don't be looking for me to do that any time soon. How would I afford the new patio and swimming pool? I just felt like letting off a little steam. Thanks, I feel a lot better.

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