According to Kreider, what lies behind this busyness isn’t simply ambition and drive; it’s also a “dread [of] what they might have to face in its absence.” That’s because “busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, [and] a hedge against emptiness.It’s our way of telling ourselves that our lives “cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless” if we are “in demand every hour of the day.”

For the past few months, the New York Times has been running a series on anxiety at its “Opinionator” blog. According to the Times, “for many,” anxiety “is not a disorder, but a part of the human condition.” The series’ stated goal is to explore “how we navigate the worried mind, through essay, art and memoir.”

Reading the contributions, I’m struck by two things: first, the worries and anxieties being discussed are, for the most part, the epitome of what has been dubbed “first world problems.” What’s being explored isn’t the struggle to make ends meet, much less the hand-to-mouth existence that billions around the planet struggle with.

Nor is it the stuff of mood disorders that require medical help. Instead, it’s the stuff of “angst,” a kind of dread that comes from the suspicion that life, as we presently live it, doesn’t make sense.

Well, it doesn’t, which makes the conspicuous absence of faith in the discussion – my second observation – all the more, well, conspicuous.

A telling example is a recent entry entitled “The Busyness Trap” by Tim Kreider. Kreider points out that when most people say that they’re “busy,” they aren’t talking about working multiple jobs to put food on the table or “pulling back-to-back shifts in the ICU.”

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