I’d love to occupy myself with fun activities, games, travel, etc. but I am too busy reading and thinking. If I had as much free time as you, maybe I’d do all that stuff.

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Fact is, I don’t do any of those things people do for fun because I don’t love any of it.

And you don’t read and think as much as I do because you don’t love it. And that is OK.

What is not OK is acting like the only reason someone might spend time reading and thinking is that the person happens to have a surplus of free time — which is probably gained at someone else’s expense.

The story goes like this: “We’d ALL love to sit around dreaming up great ideas, if we weren’t so busy. Lucky you, dreamer. Wish the rest of us were so lucky.”

Bullshit.

Busy people are always inventing pleasurable hassles for themselves — fulfilling, entertaining or distracting complications to fill in the gaps between duties — and they never, ever have free time. They don’t permit the time to free up, because they don’t want it free. And for the same reason, they don’t define it and defend it and keep it free.

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Busyness is a taste that some have and others lack, just like what time of day you like most. Morning people are no better than anyone else — and busy people are just busy people. It’s nothing to be proud of or ashamed of.

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We make time for what we care about.

We can’t decide to care or not care, love or not love. We can try to cultivate caring or love or to starve them in the hope that they atrophy, weaken or die. But caring and love are living, growing things.

We can’t expect anyone to miraculously produce love or care for anything ex nihilo, but existent love will sometimes try to cultivate new loves for the sake of a beloved person. And according to most, in word and resounding action: sometimes won’t.