Are you happy or just busy?

A better question is am I happy, or just distracted?

Following a short but poignant existential crisis over the summer where a lack of projects and work left me in a limbo-esque ennui that has remained in the background for the better part of the last year, I have begun to question my need to stay perniciously busy.

Moreover, an unwitting sojourn into yoga and Eastern practices of meditation and just "Being", have made me painfully aware that I compulsively use work to stave off an encroaching, existential entropy.

In attempting to learn how to better be grateful for and content with the present, rather than looking wistfully in the distant future, I came across the theory of a happiness benchmark. I'll let you venture into that rabbit hole on your own but suffice to say that my issue, apparently, is making my happiness satisfaction upon certain conditions.

The problem with that system is that I refuse to rest on my laurels and another finish line is immediately drawn further down the road:

The thirty pounds I lost are immaterial, I still need to drop forty more.

It's nice that I'm graduating Cum Lauda, but what really matters if I got into that doctorate program or not.

I feel great about that A- term paper, but we all know it could've been an A.

You get the idea.

My yoga teacher and nutritionist both espouse meditation but I find it nigh impossible to shut my brain down for more than a minute. The comfortable, quotidian cacophony of a million responsibilities, ambitions, and plans swallowed by a deafening silence, like a Jungian hero about to be swallowed by the dragon of the unconscious.

The current holy grail is acceptance into a doctorate program. Should that not work out this cycle then I simply wither for another year as I bulk up my CV and apply again (assuming I don't manage to win the lottery or marry rich). When it does work out, however, it will decide the next five years of my life. A rather arbitrary amount of time that is somehow both eternal and insignificant.

I'm more than busy but I'm nowhere near happy, and the more I obsess over it, the farther I get from "content".

I invite you to consider whether you're at all happy or simply busy. I certainly hope it's the fomer.