I was purchasing a sandwich in a cafe recently when the clerk asked me this: "How has your day been so far? Busy?"
The truth is that I had just woken up from a nap. It wasn’t a particularly busy day. Yet "busy" is the modern equivalent of "good," and the assumption underlying much modern conversation, even a transaction in a sandwich shop, is that we are all busier than people have been in the past. With smartphones and the constant demands of work and family, we are the busiest we have ever been.
