People are busy. They tend to spend most of their time occupied in some
activity. What makes people different is how they spend that time. The world,
in its bustle, tends to create people who are accustomed to being busy; When
someone is surrounded by activity from childhood, they grow up being used to
being busy. I believe this is a good thing, to some extent; People keeping
busy is healthy, both for themselves and for the people and environment
around them. However, there are some drawbacks to this, and I'm not just
talking about the media's perspective of it, which focuses mostly on stress
associated with having too much to do, and inability to get everything done
because there isn't enough time to do all the things you need to do. There is
a more subtle effect which many have noticed, but few are able to do anything
about: It means people are too busy acting to think about what they are
doing.
  In this life, most people are reactionary: They will respond to their
environment appropriately, feeling happy when they finish a project, feeling
frustrated when they are stuck in traffic, feeling bored if they have nothing
to do. But few people spend much time actually looking around and thinking
about what they are doing, on a larger scale. From the time they are born
until the time they die, most people are pushed along a set path, getting
educated, working a job, and living life with their family and friends until
they die. Perhaps that is all very well and good, but in the end many will
have spent oddly little time actually thinking about living, and more time
actually doing it.
  Take a look at the people around you. Chances are they are all caught up in
their own pursuits. If you are in a shopping mall, people are probably in a
hurry to buy something. If you are at a nightclub or some other social
gathering place, people are no doubt busy conversing or doing other social
activities. In a school, people will be spending time studying, among other
things. They become very focused on these objectives, so much so that they
seem oblivious to the reasons why they are doing what they are doing.
  This is what I mean when I say that people are reactionaries: They end up
living as they have been taught, doing whatever their culture implied is
normal for people to do in life, from cradle to grave, yet so rarely do they
ever actually wonder what makes them do what they do. In the end, people
become little more than automatons, programmed to a specific course and
unwilling (or perhaps unable) to change it. People have minds that allow them
to consider and make their own decisions, yet rarely do they actually use
that ability. Instead, they do what seems "normal".
  Whether this is innately a good thing or not depends on what you consider
life to be. Many people regard life as simply something to be experienced, a
series of experiences and emotions which you go through, with little goal
other than to enjoy it all. If this is life, then certainly being a
reactionary is not a problem, since you will have many experiences to take to
your grave with you.
  But there remain those who believe that life is something to do something
with, not merely to live. Those are the ones who, ultimately, cannot keep
going down the road of life, day after day, without ever stopping to wonder
exactly where they are going, and why. And when they do, there will be some
difficult questions to ask. And the answers are harder.
  But that, to me, is what life really is. Not something merely to be
followed, to be run according to a routine as a computer program is run, but
something to be analyzed and planned. It makes things a lot harder sometimes.
But it also makes life a lot more meaningful.