Working to live

For the past couple of months I have been working on a client project that was pretty demanding. It was drying me out in the end, almost killing me. I wouldn't have expected it to be so demanding when I started. It looked manageable, and it had been planned carefully. 

Ever since I can think I had trouble with the concept of working. Don't get me wrong: I love to work. I just can't get over the fact we are still doing it the same way we did in the fifties, or before that.

Even though we see the world changing, being decentralized, being globalized, being individualized—all those "izeds" have no impact on our perception of the world.

I know that living in a western world society, I am privileged. We don't realize the luxuries we have, starting from fluent water in every house to electricity, cars, credit cards and insurances. Taking those things for granted is something that's passively taught in our schools. Even worse, when someone attacks our world, we tend to try doing the same, not even thinking about what could actually have caused this attack.

What has this to do with work? A whole lot. Our perception of how we contribute to a society needs to change. And this is not about destroying materialism, or deconstructing capitalism. It's not about finding your faith, or attending more charity events.

This is about our general direction, as a working and living society. We still have both, living to work and working to live. What we should have, would be something more like living and working in harmony. I'm not talking about utopian ideas here. What we can change is our own perception of why we work and what we do with our lives.

We can stop caring about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and start caring about the education system. We can stop caring about gas prices and start caring about other religions and cultures. We can stop caring about flat screen TV prices and start caring about why we must have bottled water transported across the ocean.

I'm not asking you to abandon everything and become a nun or live like a monk. I'm simply asking you to care.

What will do that to your work? It will make you sit back once in a while, look out the window and ask yourself what you're doing with your life. And maybe it will change the roots of everything one day. Culture, education, our roots. Yes, that's possible and necessary.