The Artificial Contrast of Work and Life

An essay on Life Work


There comes a day in most people’s adult lives when they’ll ask, ‘Is this all there is?’
The question arises after some level of tangible success, personal or professional, and the awareness that the accompanying feeling sadly lacks the oomph that from years away from the goal it appeared it would have.


Conditioned to seek love, accomplishment, identity, and joy beyond the boundaries of our own bodies, the modern human is often found wanting.


Why do we seek balance between work and life?


Why do we not instead see that they are the same thing by different names?


Time has been artificially proportioned to things we do for money and things we do for fun. The interchange of these is ironically cannibalistic. The more fun you want to have, the more money you need to make. The more money you make, the more fun you need to have. And so a carousel of constant unbalance ensues with riders lost in anxiety of how to gracefully flit between two imaginary horses.


What if instead the rider discovered that the things he seeks externally are to be found internally?
Would the horse he was on matter as much?


If you ask of your desires, “Why do I want this? What will it give me?”
You’d be hard pressed to find an ultimate, underlying objective that wasn’t “to be happy,” which by another name is the experience of inner peace, congruency, or love.


I want to be a millionaire
Why? What will it give you?
I won’t have to worry about money and I can do whatever I want.
Why? What will it give you?
I can spend time with my family and enjoy them. I can work on things that matter to me
Why? What will it give you?
I’ll feel good and be excited about life.
Why? What will it give you?
I’ll be happy.


Recalibrating what you think you want to the feelings that underpin it will free you to understand what it is you actually value.
And who you really are.


Some desires will be conditioned, ‘have Luis Vuitton luggage’
Others will be true ’spend my time writing.’


True desires are your universal handprints.
The work you’re here to do.
The contribution you could make to expand consciousness.


That’s why they feel good.
When you do them, you’re aligned with your truth.
You’re home.


And so I propose that instead of alternately splashing in diametrically-opposed, artificial buckets of time that you knock them over and allow the pool that forms to be your Life Work space.


In it, you can ask questions like, “what does this task allow me to develop? Who is this person challenging me to become? How can I use my time to be truer to who am I and what I value most?”


“Work” is space by another name.
A place for you to grow and expand who YOU are.
If you approached its temple with a new mindset, perhaps you’d find that you are already where you want or need to be.
In balance.
Whole.






Identify the means AS the end.
Find the lesson in the moment.
Flow into its wisdom.
Integrate into the now.


Be home.