Is Work the Opposite of Life?

A quick Quiz from the Canadian Mental Health Association triggered some thoughts about the HR buzzword "Work-Life Balance."

Why is it that we talk about balancing Life on the one side, against Work on the other? Isn't Death the natural opposite of Life? Perhaps our work is so much like Death, that we need to make sure we don't get too much Work in our lives.

Consider these quotes from recent staff interviews, in various industries:

• This job is killing me!
• I don't know how much longer I can survive here.
• I feel so drained, so depleted, at the end of the day.
• It's sucking the life out of me.
• I just turn myself off, like a zombie.

It's no wonder that we need to talk about balance, when our work is like this. We can try to put a limit on the damage work does, on the hours we put in, but it's like trying to paint over the rust on a car - the rust is still there, it's just that the optics are better.

We need to think about why work is so death-like? Why does it drain the life out of our people? Why do we separate life from work? Why not make work life-giving instead of deadening?

Work can be the most fulfilling thing we do. Through our work, we can achieve great things together, we can solve problems, we can build deep relationships, and we can help people. If we find purpose in our work, if we make work a satisfying part of life, we no longer have to worry so much about the struggle for work-life balance.

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