In your everyday life
A machinist spends 25 years of their life programming the same lathe, grinder or press to bend, cut and create metal equipment, never thinking of changing jobs. A waiter or waitress works eight hours a day, for 20 years, serving contrary and unpleasant customers. A truck driver parks behind the wheel of their rig for 12 hours a day for the rest of their working life. An office worker consumes all their career staring at a computer screen.
For a select few of those, they love every moment of it. For the huge majority, it is worse than hell: it is purgatory, because they don’t know (and maybe don’t want to know) what awaits them afterward. And they never have any control over their working life. Bosses, customers, coworkers and government all flex power over them.
While we can relate to the majority, we wish we could be like the minority and love our lives. Not just our free time, but the time that we choose to be at work.
I say “choose.” We are not in our job or career by force. There are options, but some are more difficult to exercise than others.
Many people feel their lives are beyond their control. Worse, they feel that the world, in general, may be, if not conspiring, at least working in unison to keep them down.
But our lives are ours. We merely have to claim them. And working for 24% of every minute of every week at an unpleasant job (28% including an average 1.5 hr. per day commute time) is not “being in control” of our lives. Add in 33% of our day for sleep (and preparing for it) and we have less 39% of our life, each year, left for personal care, learning, relaxing, socializing, eating, entertainment and family.
Want another depressing statistic? In North America, the normal “tax freedom” day, when we begin to earn money for ourselves instead of giving it to the government, occurs more than six months into each year. In Canada, it is around June 13 (“Tax Freedom Day | Fraser Institute”). In the US, on April 23 (“Celebrate America’s Tax Freedom Day!”), we are no longer working to pay the government, but we are paying for extras that Canada has included in their taxes, like health care, elder (parent) care, day care and a lot of our education.
It is small wonder then that 15% of Canadians (Terlizzi and Zablotsky) currently suffer from anxiety or depression and up to 40% will experience it in their lives, while the rate is marginally higher in the US (Booth). We are stressed by life!
I sincerely hope that I have dimmed your optimism, because I want you to see how easy it is to reverse these statistics. Particularly and specifically, how your life can be fulfilling, enriching, satisfying, passionate and all those other wonderful adjectives that we hoped would describe our life when we started out in the adult world. Oh yeah, and in our control.
A Canadian satirist, Stephen Leacock, once wrote about his story’s hero, “he rode madly off in all directions.” (“Stephen Leacock: Quotes | Britannica”)
That is how many of approach the search for fulfillment and happiness. The two are not the same, but we search for both without a plan or an idea as to what we are looking for. Even when we know what we want in one area of our life, we don’t understand how each part of how we live impacts on every other part, so we compound our search. We struggle, randomly, to find fulfillment in material things, or happiness by reaching out for everything. We ride off in all directions, so we don’t have a hope of finding our destination or enjoying the journey.
In my next article, I talk about goals and objectives. It sounds dry. Boring. Pedantic. And it sounds like we would rather skip that step entirely, but try getting to the top of a scenic hill without taking several steps.
In another session, I apply Ikigai (Gaines)—the Japanese concept of finding your life’s purpose in your work—to your life. While Japanese culture may value work above many other aspects of living, in North America, we generally view work as a necessity in order to enjoy the rest of our lives. But why can we not combine both, and enjoy all of our life?
There is the heart of fulfillment. Satisfaction and a sense of contributing, rather than taking from the world. Appreciation, both for the effort and the accomplishment.
We may be momentarily happy with a fancy new outfit or a pricey meal, but fulfillment is deeper, richer and more lasting.
I spent three years of my career, mostly focused on building a seniors’ retirement facility in my hometown. It had lots of hurdles to overcome, many frustrating moments and a few disappointments, but the overall initiative was very rewarding. Work and pleasure combined.
I designed and built a unique yurt, then lived in the bush, entirely off the grid, for two years. Loved every moment, but my wife grew restless after a year. Fulfilling for me, brief happiness for my spouse.
My wife quit her job in finance and became a part-time companion for three elderly people suffering from ill health and dementia. Half the salary, many times more satisfaction.
Every choice requires relinquishing something in exchange for something else. Often, we give up money for material stuff. But we trade something for something. Conservation of energy, perhaps, as Einstein hypothesized. Mostly, we can abandon something that is either not very important to us or that we do not like in exchange for something meaningful for us. That’s a bonus, but we still must trade and barter.
Sorry. I hate to break the news to you, but you can’t have it all. That American dream is not a myth, anyway. It is a nightmare, loaded with disappointment and bitterness. You really don’t want it all.
What you want is what is important in your life. What you want is fulfillment, which provides you with happiness.
What you want is passion, which provides you with personal power and control.
How you achieve those things is not like dieting. You don’t have to struggle and sacrifice. In fact, you can indulge in all the things that are important to you, so long as you have decided which things are important and which things you mistakenly thought were important.
But you do have to put in the effort. You cannot win a foot race without putting one foot in front of the other.
Are you ready to start putting that best foot forward?
Works Cited
Booth, Jessica. “Anxiety Statistics and Facts.” Forbes Health, 19 Oct. 2023, www.forbes.com/health/mind/anxiety-statistics/.
“Celebrate America’s Tax Freedom Day!” Tax Foundation, 2017, taxfoundation.org/event/celebrate-americas-tax-freedom-day/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
Gaines, Jeffrey. “The Philosophy of Ikigai: 3 Examples about Finding Purpose.” Positive Psychology, 17 Nov. 2020, positivepsychology.com/ikigai/.
“Stephen Leacock: Quotes | Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024, www.britannica.com/quotes/Stephen-Leacock. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
“Tax Freedom Day | Fraser Institute.” Fraser Institute, 13 June 2024, www.fraserinstitute.org/categories/tax-freedom-day. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
Terlizzi, Emily, and Benjamin Zablotsky. “Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression among Adults: United States, 2019 and 2022.” National Health Statistics Reports Number, vol. 213, 2024, www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr213.pdf.