"Busy.  That loaded, time-related word! To busy to go for a walk.  To busy to talk now.  Busyness seems to be a status symbol in our culture, a way of measuring one's importance by how busy we are."  I read these words in a book "Aging with Wisdom" recently by Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle and they struck a chord with me.   I realized for myself that I do create busyness before pleasure.  A habit I had to start as a young teenager.  Work first, play later.  That is no longer true but somehow it got ingrained in me.  As the Chinese say,  if you're preoccupied with past or future, thus missing the present moment, "you're killing life."