Day 150.9: Yet Another "Bonus" Track: Work/Life Balance

More ponder-osa.

I’m forever disinclined to use the term ‘work/life balance.’ Why? Because it’s utterly ridiculous, not unlike the ubiquitous and all-too-obvious ‘Hike Your Own Hike’/HYOH. (To which I am obliged to ask: Who else’s hike are ya gonna hike?!) But why is ‘work/life balance’ ridiculous? Because it automatically suggests that one of the two is negative (hint: work) and that we need to “balance” it with the other. It also implies that life only happens when you’re not at work, or worse yet, that if you spend too much time at/on work, you don’t have a life. It’s complete BS.

Allow me for a sec to paraphrase that Beatle who was killed when we all thought he was only at middle age. It goes: “Life is what happens when you’re at work.” As my left-brain likes to say--or maybe it’s the right--“life is what happens until you’re dead.” (If my brain were donated to science, science would return it.) By the way, if you’re unsure whether you’re dead or not, I suggest the following:

Killing yourself.

If you’re already dead, it’s not going to hurt one bit, and if you’re alive but unsure, it could help clarify the matter.

I’ve always said, although I’m not sure I meant it, that balance is just an unhappy person’s word for justifying and defending doing what they don’t like doing. A coping strategy. They know they must work (note: few of us can flee this reality--work is part of life, it does not compete against it), but they don’t enjoy it. Or perhaps they do, but dislike their boss or their co-workers or the commute or something else. Often it’s not the work that bites balls, but how it’s viewed. In any case, a bad job or a bad workplace is like cancer, and so they “balance” work by living when they’re not working. “It’s all about balance!” they cry, as if they’d work if they didn’t have to. Or as if play requires work to be balanced.

Screw balance! (I prefer EQ!) Balance is the worst of both worlds!

We all possess a need to survive, and again, for the vast majority of us, that means working. To ensure our continued existence we need to feed and protect ourselves (and those we spawned), just like the animal kingdom does. But do coping strategies help us do that? Do they make us any happier? If not (and there’s no evidence whatsoever to show that they do), need we then dedicate ourselves to acquiring things? Or to the level of security and comfort we think we require? Or, worse yet, that we think we deserve? Is it worth the trade-off--sitting through a shitty job--purely for security sake, waiting for retirement, when living can finally begin? And are we sure it’ll ever be enough? Will our retirement secure us? Will it provide us the health and the opportunities we don’t currently have? Will it make us happy? If so, should we delay this gratification? Is it worth spending our days at an unhealthy desk job just to hang onto our healthcare? Is this what life has become? 

     What are we passionate about? What are you passionate about?

A self-important crap-eatin’ cretin of a boss once said to me, “There is no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices. You make them, and they’ve got consequences.”

Bad as a boss as he was, he was right on the mark with this, and I walked right out the very next day. Lots of people live where they work; I was just a visitor. I haven’t (haven--’t?) returned to the grindstone since. Gainfully unemployed! Self-unemployed! Funemployed! Sure, I’ve been occupied, and I’ve even earned some man-made, theoretically taxable money, but I haven’t worked. Securely retired, I guess you could say. Retirement ought not be the light at the end of the tunnel; it ought to be the light at the end of the rainbow.

Priorities. Live to work, or work to live. Either way, life ain’t long (yet it’s the lengthiest thing we’ll ever experience). And it’s only, lamentably, a one-time offer. Meanwhile, death’s unknown due date closes in. Why wouldn’t we take the day off? 

I’ve tried not to make this and other brain-farts I’ve scribbled come across too life-coach-y. I mean, what do I know? I’m just this messy childless boor on this long messy path, thirsting for an epiphany. (The only epiphany I have ever had went like this: “I am a loser.”) I am a genetic defective, a low-functioning societal reject, an uneducated man. Self-uneducated, you could say. I know nothing. (Believe in it too.) And I’ll likely take my life before it runs its natural course (when that man-made money runs out; though you can bet I’ll first be sure to max out whatever credit cards I can obtain, maybe even my own).

I feel saddened by--and sad for--those who hate Mondays, those working for their corporate masters, those who aim for greater and greater degrees of stability and security. Stability and security are both large liabilities, at least when they delay or impede life. You know, life. Joy; passion; overcoming fears; rising over obstacles; pursuing dreams; laughter; tears; love; music; Nature; excitement; adventure. We all need something to live for and these are the things that do it for me. Mercifully, they ain’t things.

PS: I love Mondays. Just like every other day I’ve been afforded.