Balance needed between work and life

How much is enough?

Is “enough” having the newest mobile phone or video game system? Is “enough” defined by having a fancy home or a vehicle with every bell and whistle money can buy?

If there is any positive lesson to come from the past 18 months of living with the COVID-19 pandemic it is that a reset was needed to bring more focus to people’s lives.

Those months of limited opportunities for distractions refocused people on looking inward to their families and lives and brought with it a different perspective on what was enough.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus taught his followers that pleasure was the chief good in life. He advocated living to gain the greatest amount of pleasure in life.

For good or bad, American consumer culture owes much to this Epicurean belief that there is no “good enough” and that there is always something more.

While Epicurus represents one side of the spectrum, the other is embodied by the ancient Roman senator Seneca who cautioned against a constant pursuit of “more.”

Seneca warned, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.”

You are probably thinking, “OK, but why do I care what those dead philosophers had to say?” The reason it matters is that in recognizing what was being missed in our constant drive to achieve more, Americans largely forget to value what they have.

Beyond meeting basic needs for food, housing, clothing and utilities, there comes a point where the reward for working multiple jobs diminishes the ability to enjoy life and family. With the rise of wages in local industries in the past year as competition for quality workers heated up, the absolute necessity for people to work two to three jobs diminished. Rightfully, many of the people who previously worked second or third jobs in service and retail positions crunched the numbers and determined that the cost of lost time from their families was too high and what they had was “good enough.”

There is little doubt that there is a worker shortage in Medford and other places in Wisconsin. From a societal standpoint, having a favorite restaurant closed one day a week or the potential for limited shopping hours at a retail store is outweighed by the quantifiable benefi ts of people being able to spend more time with their spouses and children. Allowing parents to spend more time being parents will have a direct benefit on future generations.

Rather than shaming people for choosing to work two jobs instead of three, or putting time with their family ahead of being on-call for ever-changing work schedules, the goal should instead be to find a balancing point that recognizes the value of being “good enough.”