Living to Work and Working to Live

Walking out of work with one of the newer girls yesterday we had a very brief conversation.  Because we don’t work near each other in the office I don’t know much about her.  She’s young, perhaps just out of college.  This might be first real job since graduation.  Smiling, though only half joking, she said, “We’re living to work and working to live.”   I remember when the harsh reality slowly dissolved my illusions of what my life would be like after finishing school.  We are brought up (or at least I was) to believe that once we graduate college we can find a job that we love to do and earn a decent living.  

After working at a credit card processing company four four years (yes, it is four years in June) I have long since come to the realization that very few of us find the job of our dreams.   In addition, I've also learned the "working to live" mantra some time ago.  However, something about her saying it yesterday caused me to think about it a bit more.  Maybe it was the NPR show on poverty that Dave and I listened to going to get pizza yesterday as well.  Either way, the "living to work and working to live" bit is quite a catch 22.  In the end, it is the major reason for people wanting to be rich.  It isn't that they want more and more things though there's always something awesome to buy.  It isn't because we want to travel to exotic places in luxury.  Really, what we want is to not feel like we are living to work and working to live.  

We want the freedom that being rich provides.  We want to feel like going to work is something that we want to do, not something that we have to do.  Is it a pipe dream?  Unfortunately, for the majority of us, yes.  In today's economy it's become even harder to dream but I do not believe the dream to be dead.  No, we might not be able to "choose" to work.  We may always "have" to go to work but I still believe that we might be able to find a job that we might enjoy going to each morning.  It' not impossible; my husband is proof of that.  Maybe it means that we won't make the most money in the world but if it gives us some enjoyment and meaning, that's what I think matters.  Especially since working to live is going to be a necessity for most of us.