A year without stock answers

From the time you wake up until you fall asleep, you will probably hear the question “How are you?” at least 15 times. I give this number with some confidence, because I counted yesterday.

Half those times, you probably hear the same response: I’m busy. How am I? Busy.

As UNC students, we run the tenuous gamut of full schedules. It happens inevitably, even unfolding within the first week of classes.

UNC students are known for being involved and surrounding themselves with other people who have equally irascible schedules. However, we choose for it to be this way.

I’m tired of responding to casual inquiries by saying, “I’m busy.” I have to have a job, but nobody forces me to do extracurricular activities. I choose to do them because I want to do them.

Funny, then, that we behave as if we’re victims.

By advertising our preoccupation, we’re really just self-validating: I do things, therefore I belong. I only sleep four hours a night, therefore I have value as a student.

“Busy” does not actually answer the question, “How are you?”

Small talk transforms into a list of self-accolades rather than something genuine and natural. You ask someone how they are and a dam breaks loose of personal announcements disguised as complaints.

“I’m busy” is the new stock answer that feeds into a culture of comparison which makes everyone, even the most engaged person, feel like they don’t measure up to some invisible standard of constant occupation.

Busy is boring. So this year, I’m proposing something radical: Let’s just stop saying it.

I don’t mean that we should put on a mask of Zen or start doing conversation yoga. Only that we replace that one word with more thoughtful, creative adjectives.

This will be a challenge for me as well, and I hope you hold me to that form of conversation dieting.

It is unrealistic to suggest that every causal interaction turn into a slow distillation of truth, but at the very least, let’s not rely on the same tired phrase.

Everyone has a full schedule, in one way or another, but it shouldn’t matter if that preoccupation is visible.

We’re lucky to have the leisure of schedules, and perhaps eliminating the busy axiom will help save us from the American windmill of chosen stress.

We should fill our time with things we care about, but not just to promote an image.

Let’s not hashtag solitude. Let’s resist the siren call of verbal justification. When someone asks, let’s think before speaking: am I sleepy, over caffeinated, inexplicably giddy? Next, say it.

Any of those responses are more interesting and meaningful than the empty emotion of mere activity. Adjectives are intentional and colorful.

And slowly, perhaps, the intentionality of those adjectives can leak out into the corners of our lives where we need them most.

Sarah Edwards is a columnist from The Daily Tar Heel. She is a senior American Studies major from Davidson, N.C. Contact her at scedward@live.unc.edu.