Work/Life Balance is for Chumps

Life consists only of moments…nothing more than that. So if you make the moment matter, it all matters. ~Ellen Langer, Mindfulness in an Age of Complexity (HBR)

I’ve been preaching the doctrine of work/life balance for so long I can’t remember where I picked it up. And I do believe it: there is a balance to be had as we go about our days and navigate the domains of work, family, health, opportunity, children, aging parents who won’t fucking listen, self. It’s as I’ve labored my mightiest — and sacrificed needs, wants, and desires in the process— to find balance that I’ve discovered balance is an illusion. Balance arrives in small moments that land and take flight, as lightly as a tern on the shore, before we even know it was there. All we have is a lingering soupcon, an inkling of pause, before we are back to our flying trapeze, ready for the next showing of the circus act to begin.

In her article above, Ellen Langer shares an idea around work/life integration, that I think is very of-the-moment. It’s all flowing together right now, so the concept of work/life balance doesn’t apply like it did. We are being forced to integrate all of our domains into one, and it is a bumpy, uncomfortable, and confusing transition fraught with all kinds of questions, reckonings, and guilt-ridden day drinking.