The Work Life Balance
Talk of the so-called "work-life" balance is everywhere: in law school and at law firms; among associates, law students, and partners; on chat boards and in lawyerly magazines - fucking everywhere. Hearing mothers and fathers and choir singers and violinists talk about balancing work with taking care of their children, having babies, writing, singing, or whatever they take to be "life" leads me to conclude that these people have vastly overestimated the utility of their non-work lives.
After some thought on the issue, I've decided one might pictorially represent the ideal balance between work and life thus: WORK life.
The virtues of WORK are numerous, the vices of life many.
WORKing long, grueling hours develops character, helps one become disciplined, and keeps you from becoming highly unhealthy. Living a life leads to alcoholism, drug addiction, slothfulness, and - more likely than not - VD.
WORKing obscene amounts improves earning potential and helps you save lots of money. If you're WORKing 100 hours a week, you don't have time to waste money at a bar, on your kids, at a restaurant, or on some woman. Soul crushing hours don't allow you to worry about how unattractive you are, how out of date your clothes may be, or the countless other ways in which you are irredeemably inadequate. WORKis thus an excellent anti-depressant.
life is little but a source of misery more often than not: friends dying, relatives dying, hangovers, bitter breakups, casual breakups, self-questioning, pointlessness, boredom, and so forth.
I'm not arguing we should be masochists. Rather I'm arguing a very Epicurean position. That is, what we should strive at isn't maximizing pleasure but rather avoiding pain. Ataraxia is what we want. I maintain - for the best of reasons - that we'll find more of this at WORK than in life, and it's about time people started realizing this and stopped complaining about the number of hours they must bill.
After some thought on the issue, I've decided one might pictorially represent the ideal balance between work and life thus: WORK life.
The virtues of WORK are numerous, the vices of life many.
WORKing long, grueling hours develops character, helps one become disciplined, and keeps you from becoming highly unhealthy. Living a life leads to alcoholism, drug addiction, slothfulness, and - more likely than not - VD.
WORKing obscene amounts improves earning potential and helps you save lots of money. If you're WORKing 100 hours a week, you don't have time to waste money at a bar, on your kids, at a restaurant, or on some woman. Soul crushing hours don't allow you to worry about how unattractive you are, how out of date your clothes may be, or the countless other ways in which you are irredeemably inadequate. WORKis thus an excellent anti-depressant.
life is little but a source of misery more often than not: friends dying, relatives dying, hangovers, bitter breakups, casual breakups, self-questioning, pointlessness, boredom, and so forth.
I'm not arguing we should be masochists. Rather I'm arguing a very Epicurean position. That is, what we should strive at isn't maximizing pleasure but rather avoiding pain. Ataraxia is what we want. I maintain - for the best of reasons - that we'll find more of this at WORK than in life, and it's about time people started realizing this and stopped complaining about the number of hours they must bill.
posted by Mr. Misanthropic at 11:33 AM
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