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Okay, so the work/life balance is something I write a good bit about, and seems to be a generally hip topic at the moment, but I never hear anyone talking about the balance between work and play. Why is that?

Sure, it seems simple to divide our lives between “work” and “life”, with life being everything that work is not. So, then, what is “work”? Is it only what you do at the office or factory or wherever you are given money to perform duties? Mowing the lawn isn’t work? Chaperoning field trips isn’t work? Doing the laundry isn’t work? That seems nonsensical. I’m not really sure how thinking beings could arbitrarily divide their days as such and not notice the enormous incongruities involved.

Isn’t it more accurate to talk about a balance between work and play, since I think that is what people actually mean when they talk about a work/life balance? Pretty much everyone can easily divide their lifes into these two categories; things they feel compelled to do, and things they do solely out of interest. For most people though, the things in the play column will be few, or none.

I suppose that we don’t talk about a Work / Play balance because the concept of play is seen as frivolous, childish and greedy. How dare someone play all day while we have to work! That just isn’t fair! This ridiculous idea is born of the same horrendously destructive Puritan work ethic that holds that “nothing worthwhile is easy” and makes the greatest compliment one can give the recently deceased that “he worked hard all his life”.

Truly, we are blinded by our conception that work is, by its very nature, the central theme of our lives; that it always has been, always will be, and that is as it should be, amen. We define ourselves by job description, we lose sleep in order to work more, and we become more and more disconnected, our experience of the world outside our job mediated more and more completely by our technological progress.

It’s no wonder that we talk about our “work” and our “life” being seperate - we are working so hard that we are no longer living, there is no “life” in us to speak of, we have become drones, machines, cogs in a wheel that stamps out individuality and sense of self and replaces it with “retail therapy” and increasing alienation. maybe it’s time to stop thinking about work so much, and think about living.