The scattered concept of a "work life balance” is perhaps the most absurd claim of our culture: that somehow, there is a dichotomy between the way one lives & the way they exert effort to produce a desired result. It is the energy of life itself that empowers the work to begin with. Its activity, therefore, is an essential & sacred aspect of humanity. But to the misfortune of the Earth & ignorance of the body's sensitivities, many millions of individuals are working on tasks that aren't serving the upliftment of either. This forces a sensitive being to break from this distorted form of work so finally the living can begin.
Common sense reveals that continuity of experience is paramount; & ones work is ultimately contained within one's life in an interwoven dance of experience. One should support the other, not be repelled. The former arrangement creates natural competence & joy. Whereas the latter creates an unnecessary ordeal & a schizophrenic world view that plagues our society today. Having a balance between work & rest is sensible. But of work & life is insane. The most powerful distraction of maturity due to its immense social support is to working on detours of life, & then have to remember its value in the "off" time. In effect, this dismissive behavior is to disrespect the very tool one depends upon to complete the work itself. So with more time spent in its process, the more degraded ones experience becomes as a whole. Hence the infamous association with work in general. Most dread what they do because it drags their body closer to the grave instead of strengthening it through sensible exercise. There is a distinct difference between the joy of exerting effort, & the debilitation of enduring pain. Effort is not painful. Misalignment is. In fact, the wise expense of energy is the maintenance & growth of vitality. But channeled in an unnatural direction against the way of original design, is a gradual destruction of self that inevitably finds its way into the environment & the communities of all species within it. Man destroys forests only because he has first destroyed himself through the dumb affairs he carries out on a daily basis.
The fundamental reward of intelligent work is ultimately an improved vessel one can live with. The widget is merely a byproduct that can be bought & sold. With each swing of the axe, the tree may not be chopped, but the strength of the arms & skill with the blade increases. The bonus is the wood & rush of released gratification whose well of emotional nourishment was delayed until its bursting forth from within at the right moment after diligent, intriguing, & adapting effort has been acted out. But if with each swing, a portion of a man's muscle tears that are weaved to his destabilizing emotion, nothing but a broken human & half baked work will be the result of this poor process. & if a man does not have the fire within his soul to operate a position that requires intensity to perform well like all fulfilling ones do; if he's fatigued upon punching the clock, then he's sure to be burnt by the work rather than his flame being the light of the many candles that must be lit along the path to achievement.
People throughout history have given their lives to work on what aligns with their story; & those tales that do no match the dreams of one's mind have the power to drain one of psychological will if they are worked on. To manifest a project without grasping its context is like being dropped in a strange land without knowing the location of where one came from before, & why the journey took place to begin with. Therefore, interpreting a course or even considering a reasonably organized future ahead is an impossibility. This is the inception of despair: a mental disorientation of purposeful life being on one timeline, & mechanical work being on another, if not abruptly, gradually pulls the psyche apart into fragments until its whole becomes unrecognizable by the individual. One cannot evolve in any direction if the very base of memory that's used to synthesize an innovative plan of adventure is split into dissonant pieces. In this farce of a good life, one abides in a constant state of analysis, of identifying concepts in a vacuum without a vision as to how this practice seeped in frivolity aids the cultivation of relevance: the key component of holistic quality elevation.
At the grand scheme, this misguided practice of a "work life balance" that drives people to psych wards is the vain attempt to split one consciousness into two. Each with their own personality that never communicate with each other to find common ground. The momentum of prosperity cannot exist if one's form changes every eight hours. The gold medalist sprinter has made the track his place of work & his life enhancing incubus. Such is the same for the five star chef who experiences the kitchen as a playground & an arena to nurture his passion & self mastery. The a-list actor dreams about their role in the depths of their sleep & awakes the next day energized to improve the play as a whole. These masters demonstrate devotion to their craft which creates predictability of competence to receive corresponding long term rewards as a side effect of their iterative experiments. But for the man who works in a cold office detached from the flow of nature as he deals with abstractions & social structures that only appear in the silo that present themselves nowhere outside the tight borders; when he comes home to try & embrace his family with emotional warmth in attempts to remember the dynamics of life, he & his family will find he's missed the mark. The robotic tendencies which allow him to succeed in a synthetic environment do not translate into the real one. How can a man remove the corporate mask he wore for as along as the sunlight was visible, & put on the kinship mask in a thirty minute drive home through the maze of machines operated by others who are just as cold; & then somehow find rest in his confusing headroom only to prepare for the cold the next morning & be a sane, competent human being? He cannot. It would in fact hurt his progress at work if he were to consider life while on the job. It's far more beneficial, in this two faced situation, to suppress authentic dreams so one’s attention can focus on handling the endless minutia.
In this process, one can easily lose their soul with enough repetition. A soul, however, that can be regained by developing an non-entertained, coherent sense of vision & creating a schedule that enriches the whole. To live well, you do not need to betray your humanity. You must lean more into it, & let its natural ability to connect seemingly unrelated dots into a unified communication happen to the point where the entire system makes sense. You need not divide your way of life to prosper; you need only paint the one mosaic of your life's work. More than anything, the world needs collected human beings whose detailed & vast perspectives align. It takes courage to feel & think & speak & act your way into harmony across the space & time of your life. But the universe itself is assisting you if you listen. If you learn to simply be quiet & observant as you reach attunement to the present, you will find instead of being influenced by the fragmenting messages of society, you will be molded by the natural infrastructure of the natural, multibillion year old system that all forms of life abide in. Truly, all is one; & all agrees. It's just that when attention is taken away into the countless artificial systems of civilization, it appears to be scattered: a mere illusion that loses its grip on your energy the moment you release investing in its temptation. Refuse to be distracted from your natural way of seeing, & your view back to Nature will be revealed.
