The Oasis logo.
Credit: DH Illustration
Today we are confronted with the concept of work life balance which has been long shunted to the periphery of our consciousness.. Extra amount of work beyond mental and physical capacity has been normalised to such an extent that no questions were asked, no explanations given. Overwork is lauded and glorified regardless of the human cost and the devastation it can cause. It is only recently when many young lives were sacrificed on the subhuman altar of everyday work, we are stopping to take note.
While all of us agree that work is the defining force of a human being and it becomes a duty towards society and the community we live in, it is about tipping the balance. A meaningless, robotic pursuance of work destroying the sanctity of work itself, cannot be a holistic life an individual is expected to lead.
Mistaken notions of efficiency, productivity, profit and pursuit of material wealth are the goal posts today leaving little time for the needs of families, creative pursuits and spiritual yearnings. No religion advocates work beyond human capacity and the Bible tells us that after seven days of creation God rested and commanded that the Sabbath should be revered as the day of rest.
Revving up the treadmill of life to achieve success and status we are leading lives of anxiety and agitation. Lewis Caroll’s Red Queen says” The world is spinning so fast that it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”. At this frenetic pace many would experience a burn out, a snuffing out of their innate abilities and a large sense of purposelessness.
It is also ironical that with so much technology at our command, to ease human work pressure we are spending longer hours and experiencing more discomfort at work. Technology does not allow us to leave work at the work place, haunting our waking and sleeping hours. Such jobs induce feelings of hopelessness, depression and self loathing. They are forms of spiritual violence directed at the essence of what it means to be a human being
Organisations move forward when its workforce is happy and fulfilled with empathy and trust from the employers who are seen as mentors. Access to vacations, flexible work hours, remote work where considered feasible and step in efforts when employees are in a crisis, physical or mental are the need of the hour.