Dear Diary,
– Why do you write those marathon posts on Facebook? – a good friend of mine asked me yesterday. Well, I say, sometimes thoughts accumulate and accumulate in my head, forming some large, heavy logical construct, and then you want to dump it somewhere so your head becomes empty and good again. – But why not in a diary? – Not in a diary? I start all my posts with “Dear Diary”… :-)
Today – about work. Because what else to write about on a Saturday, if not work, right? Not so long ago, a wonderful colleague of mine, who, by the way, has a wonderful dog :-), was labeled a workaholic in a discussion. I know this colleague as a person radiating love for his work, for his rather specific field, full of energy and initiative, creating miracles out of thin air wherever his hands and attention are directed. That attention he carefully conserves, not squandering it on non-essential matters that don’t directly concern him. In short, a person who has fully found the space for his essential purpose, self-realization, and even received an award for it from the hands of the Minister of the Interior herself – I saw it with my own eyes!
To call that workaholism, i.e., to emphasize a disease or disorder… Well, I don’t know, my tongue wouldn’t turn. However, I have seen cardinal opposite viewpoints, heard cardinal opposite opinions. And, probably more unhappy than happy, there are far more such people. One person, for instance, wrote a letter to his Facebook readers about how socializing with colleagues after work, meeting up with them, spending leisure time together, is a sign of a loser and a failure. The idea being – at 16:57 you step through the office door and that’s it, you’re in your own life now, surrounded only by your own friends with no reminder of that damn work. After all, probably more than once, when asking a colleague rushing through the door before work is even over where they’re headed, you’ve heard the proud answer “I have my own life!”.
So how does this work out now? If a person’s life begins at 16:57, where were they all that previous time since 8 in the morning? Not in their own life? In servitude, in obligation? Because you need to pay utilities, you need to buy food… So let’s calculate then – a person sleeps 8 hours a day, works 8 hours a day, so how much life is left? Also 8 hours, i.e., a third of the day? Meaning, subtracting weekends and vacations, kindergartens and schools, we get that a person who lived 60 years had only 20 years of life? The remaining 40 years were taken from them by needs? The need to rest and the need to eat? So who among us is the loser, having lost two-thirds of their life?
I won’t hide it – I once had “my own life” too. It consisted of such meaningful activities as drinking beer with friends and chasing girls. And again, repeated beer drinking when I couldn’t catch those girls, when someone else caught them, or when upon catching up they dealt a painful slap, rudely declaring “stop chasing me!”. I can’t imagine what good and useful thing I found in that, but I perfectly remember nervously glancing at the clock from 15:00 onward, watching how slowly the minutes ticked to those blessed 16:57, to my own life! This is no way to sit at work…
But the other day, leafing through sketches of work done over the past couple of decades, I realized with a beautiful sentiment that what I am today was shaped precisely by work, by clients, managers, and their orders. It wasn’t a pint of beer that taught me to design, nor a teenage me that wrote a PHP script. It’s generally accepted to believe that the most important thing in life is to find a soulmate and raise one, two, or three wonderful children who in old age, lazily rocking in a chair and remembering the path traveled, will tirelessly carry that glass of water. That work by importance goes to third or fourth place, and anyone who elevates it higher is undoubtedly a sick person and a workaholic. But what, if not work, every day makes us even greater professionals, gives us opportunities to realize ourselves (or at least try), to use our favorite talents and skills.
After everything written above, even the thought “I am a designer (or programmer, whatever I call myself), but my life begins after work. Work is not part of my life” would sound foolish to me myself. On the contrary – work is a foundational part of my life, giving the entire journey some tangible meaning, some tangible growth. People present in my life during work hours are equally in it after work, because they are part of that one whole, undivided into “work” and “non-work” life. And, I believe, such a view is the key to a full life, the key to a healthy psyche, the key to a kind of Nirvana (I wonder, would Ukrainian language specialists say that the word “nirvana” also translates as “un-torn”, “ni rvana”?). And lacking such a view, one shouldn’t label everyone around as workaholics, but rather look at them with breathless white envy in your eyes – after all, one big life is more interesting than two small ones :-)
Oh my, what a lot I’ve poured out. Dear Diary, if this post is read by those abundant people surrounding me who tirelessly demonstrate love for their work, their profession, their colleagues and clients, let them know that every written line is dedicated to them – so they don’t stop, so they don’t doubt, and so they respect and value themselves even more :-)
