Lifework

Stickman wondered just how much he was allowed to enjoy work without losing his balance.

Work-life balance, that's what we need isn't it? I've said it so many times I hardly even stopped to think about it. Wikipedia defines it as ‘... a concept including proper prioritizing between "work" (career and ambition) and "lifestyle" (health, pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development/meditation).’

When I stopped to think about it though, I realised that what seems on the surface to be a positive aspiration, can actually be quite perverse. The concept of balance implies two things that are in opposition to each other, exerting leverage in opposite directions.

Presumably, life is all the important stuff, the stuff we might really care about, the things we remember in moments of calm. Work is what’s left, the necessary but ultimately unimportant stuff. The idea of work-life balance is that we need to stop one from overwhelming the other; we need to keep them both, and particularly work, in check.

I think this reduces work to its lowest possible level. It reinforces the depressing idea that we have to squeeze in the really important stuff of life to times when we can get away from our day jobs. That’s not a very inspiring aspiration, and I think it’s an idea that is incompatible with a search for meaningful work.

What if we could see work as a means thorough which we express what is most important about our life? What if our work was a means by which our fleeting thoughts, inspirations and skills were moulded into something more tangible? What if it felt comfortable to blur the boundaries between work and life as they reinforced each other in positive ways?

Rather than work-life balance, I wonder if we could aspire to lifework.