There’s More to Life Than Working Yourself to Death
Let’s change the narrative — before it’s too late
Anti-work
There’s More to Life Than Working Yourself to Death
Never mind the health effects of COVID but the effects of worker burnout are real. I have friends all over the tech world that make a pretty penny in perks, salary, and options at their startups. They’re not putting the pedal to the metal, they’re all stepping back. All of them.
Some of them take on less responsibility while others say “no” to more projects. In some cases, some are just quitting and starting their non-industry-related businesses. Everyone is disillusioned with work.
If there ever was a silver lining to the COVID pandemic it was this, people stopped and looked around. They were on this exhausting and tireless work-life escalator and they wanted to get off.
Why? Because there’s more to life than work. There has to be.
The work-life escalator
We’ve been deluded into believing that our careers and jobs are linear. Just like in The Game of Life, there are two paths after high school: work or college. If you go to college you delay the work part for a bit.
It’s like the only outcome of being alive is to work, and not everyone’s labor is equal.
This doesn’t make sense, there has to be more to life than just working all the time. The work-life escalator as opposed to the “work-life balance” and the work-life escalator reminds me a lot of sending cows to the slaughterhouse. It’s an illusion of choice, you can choose any path to walk down but they both lead to your death.
My parents worked themselves to the bone when I was growing up. They always had a side hustle going. My mom was incredibly frugal and saved every penny. My father worked full-time and repaired cars on the side.
He’d be in our garage in the middle of winter under the hoods of cars fixing whatever was wrong.
What do they have to show for it? My dad is dead and my mom is just a bag of skin and bones. COVID nearly killed them; one succumbed to long COVID complications and the other keeps losing weight.
People are naturally creative and productive
When the shutdowns happened and people couldn’t go to work how did their lives fare? Some played video games and worked on their health. Others learned to play an instrument, bake bread, or focus on their side hustle. Every single one of them focused on their well-being.
I’m not anti-work, but I can’t help but wonder why so many of us are killing ourselves just to get some food to eat and a roof over our heads. The current social narrative is that you don't deserve to eat if you’re lazy and not working.
Let me be the first to say that laziness is a religious construct. If you don’t believe in God the sooner you get that poisonous trap out of your head the better.
People, when left to their own devices, will find a way to occupy their time. They are naturally creative and productive. One friend took to turning wood and making bowls while he was out of work. Another friend started a meditation center. Many people that I knew took to a new hobby or created art.
There’s nothing wrong with working at a labor of love. Many of my friends started volunteering at food banks, soup kitchens, or youth groups. Many of my friends are “planting trees in whose shade they never will sit under,” and that’s the key.
It’s the investment in the community, it’s the nachwuchs that my father was concerned about. He’s right.
What we plant now will pay off one day, the question we must ask ourselves is what kind of trees are we planting?
Elon Musk is a symptom of what’s wrong
I’ve been watching the utter carnage happening on Twitter since Elon Musk took it over. I think it will collapse or at least go the way MySpace did. No matter what happens, Musk’s insane love for a destructive work ethic is troublesome.
If you worked 90+ hours a week on Twitter 2.0 and drop dead, he wouldn’t give a shit. He’ll just go on trolling about how awesome he is and how rich he is.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and all the other 1% capitalist billionaires are a symptom of what’s wrong with this work-life escalator. They’ve figured out how to exploit your labor, pay you peanuts, and discard you when you’re no longer useful to them.
I have an MBA and I was appalled to learn that we call workers, interchangeable labor units. Sure it makes counting things easier but it dehumanizes everyone. Dehumanization is one step away from the destruction of life, just ask the Nazis in World War 2 about that.
The trees we planted, all those years ago, are tall and they’re crowding out the light for us. Yes, they give us shade, but it’s time we thin them out. It’s time we cut them down. It’s time to clear the metaphorical land for a new forest, one that we all plant together.
The wake-up call, the rebirth
There are two videos that keep resonating with me over the years. The first one is from the movie “Up in Air.” It reminds me a lot of my past traveling I did but this particular scene is incredibly haunting.
George Clooney is the guy they bring in to lay off large groups of people. He’s the executioner but he tries to be human about it. In the clip below he asks the employee to not give up on his dream of being a French chef, that this layoff freed him and gave him the opportunity to chase a dream he had as a young man.
We never find out what happens to the man in this clip but I’d like to believe he took a chance. He took a chance to do what he always loved to do. I’d like to believe that everything worked out for him.
The realist in me says he’s probably eking out a paltry living because our capitalistic society doesn’t give a shit about chefs, waitstaff, and food industry workers. The Musks and the Bezos of the world look at you with disdain.
The second clip is an audio voice-over from Alan Watts where he talks about this work-life escalator we’re on. He points out that after all this work and sacrifice, you end up being too weak to live. This is exactly what happened to my father. He worked himself to the bone, retired, and then had a heart attack. His quality of life dropped over the last 16 years of his life.
A once strong man, a caring man, full of life and song, died in his sleep a withered shell of a man.
Fuck that.
Stop the madness.
We need a rebirth, we need to grow as a society and focus on kindness, support, and above all compassion.
We need to assign every labor unit his or her name and family name. We need to know who they are, to put a face to them. To know they are like you and me.
We need to put humanity back into our world. We need to build new communities and plant new trees.
We need to change the narrative now before it’s too late.
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