Were We Made To Work 50 Weeks Out Of The Year?

What is it exactly in this world that we should value? Does money deserve the great priority that it seems many give it, and by what means can we use to change our perspective?

Were we made to work 50 weeks out of the year is a question that came to me in the midst of pondering the system in which we exist, and the realization that most of the occupations people pursue are merely system maintenance or bureaucratic in some way. Advancing the human race is certainly not a part of most of the jobs that most of us have as occupations. We maintain the system and what is our reward? Two full weeks off a year, and of course no work on the weekends.

Why is it that we have to make time to pursue that which makes us feel the most fulfilled? Why is it that we have to find the opportunities to see the beauty of the world? To go travel, or jump out of a plane, or to just walk through a museum of art or history. Why is it that most of our time is preoccupied with jobs and work instead of discovering those things most important to humanity, to what makes us so great as people and creatures of this earth? Or to just sit down and share some quiet time with family or boisterous laughter with friends.

One could answer that we need to work because we get paid, that jobs demand that we work on a schedule that we cannot set. But of what purpose is getting paid? To get money. And of what utility is money? We need it to live, and to that it seems a fair response to say that we need money to live only in this artificial world. You cannot drink money, or breath cash, there is no nutritional value in a hundred dollar bill. Money can’t keep you warm, unless you burn it, and that is likely considered an act of unnatural depravity by some in this world. In The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde wrote, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” If anything truthful or honest has been said or written in the past hundred and some odd years it is certainly this quite prophetic sentence.

What is real anymore, what is worth anything, is there anything that has value beyond money? We constantly hear figures of extremes. Millions, billions, trillions. We hear how little the poor have and how much the rich have. And often it may be spoken and heard that the judge of a person is not the balance of their bank account, or how much stock they have but something abstract, beyond the material; but does anyone actually think that way anymore? It is like if the Cowardly Lion had said “I do not believe in spooks” even though before his eyes there was incredible evidence that “spooks” were quite active. Say those words as often and as loudly as possible, hoping that they will be true, or become realty soon enough. Is there any honesty left to hear, any truth left to discover, or has that been packaged and sold, manufactured overseas for pennies on the dollar.

Yet it cannot be said that we are only victims of this “system.” We are the creators and masters of our own servitude and serfdom. The world that is here cannot be blamed on generations past, for if we have any measure of resolve certainly we are capable, and more than allowed, to change that which we have inherited. We are all actively or tacitly responsible for the state of our world and our lives, and the future of both. So let us take our blame with a grain of slat and sugar for it is both a curse and a blessing, that which we have. Nothing is stopping us from throwing off that which is, and fostering and nurturing that which should be. A world where we recognize the good of a person not from anything but their character and their actions and their moral worth or corruption. A world in which we do not merely find time for personal and collective fulfillment, but instead actively seek and encourage every living soul to reach our greatest potential.