Everybody is busy these days. They are either doing something or working on something. Hell, even things are busy, or “in use.” Bees are famously busy, that’s why we say of a really industrious person that they are “busy as a bee.” They just never stop. Now let us reveal a small secret: much of our busyness is pathetically empty—people are just filling their time with useless fripperies. I think it’s because we are afraid to sit alone in a room.
But do you know what form of busy is always a good thing? Why being active! An active person is not just a passive observer. No, no, no. They are involved. They participate. They might be an active church member, active in the community, active in some social cause for which their bleeding heart bleeds. Nobody praises you for sitting alone with your cat. But if you’re active, high praise for you. Even just being physically active earns you points in society, no matter if you are young or old. Everybody’s heard about how active somebody’s kids are. I always wonder, which kids aren’t active? And older people! “She is great, she is ACTIVE! She walks.”
How about if you are busy with a specific task, like cleaning the snake cages? Then you are occupied. “Jeb is occupied with the cages.” That is a specific task. Or if you know he is sitting on the toilet making some noise but you don’t want to be rude, you can simply say, “Jeb? He is… occupied.”
One could be occupied with thoughts. A lot of people occupy themselves with senseless thoughts, like the weather. But if someone is engrossed with some thought, that means they are having an enjoyable time thinking about it and they are really, really involved in thinking about it. If it is a very specific thought, then we can speak of them being engaged, especially if they are prepared to actually do something about it. Engaged is locked-in and fixated about something—think it’s a mistake that we describe two people headed for marriage as “engaged?”
