Balance Your Life

“The trouble with the rat race is that, even if you win, you're still a rat” ~ Lily Tomlin ~
There was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when families were expected to give up
everything in order to achieve the financial security they craved. Perhaps you
remember those decades, perhaps you are too young to recall those times.
Those were the days when climbing the corporate ladder was a revered activity, and
wives and children gazed fondly at pictures of the breadwinner in order to remember
whether poor, exhausted Dad had blue eyes or brown.
Large companies moved employees from one city to another, like pawns on a
chessboard and, if you had any hope of climbing the ladder toward upper management
positions, you packed up the wife and kids and moved on from Chicago, to Boston, to
New York, to Tokyo.
In the intervening years, the divorce rate climbed, fathers lost touch with their families
and died of heart attacks and strokes at an alarming rate. When these men retired, they
felt useless and unproductive.
Over the years, the identity of these men had become inextricably tied to their success
on the job. New retirees found themselves wondering who they were, and why they
were living with women who were complete strangers to them. And, whatever
happened to those darling kids who used to live in the house?
Then women entered the workforce in earnest and joined the rat race.
Lest you think that this rat race has come to an end, look to the evidence of stress
related death and illness, an increase in the average number of hours worked by
employees in the U.S. and around the world, skyrocketing numbers of divorces and
children in single-parent families.
And, let us not forget those of us who are responsible for the care of aging parents.
We live in a world of conveniences that were designed to give us more leisure time.
But, it would seem that all the informational overload, whirring computers and media
blitz has given us is more time for work.
It is not unusual for men and women to work sixty or seventy hours per week on
average. Some of us work eighty or ninety hours without batting an eyelash. And, we
fool ourselves into thinking we have a life!