another exhausted concept?

Work-life balance. Secular mantra. A slogan of the civil service. Religious infiltration as a means of tempering the sinful damning profit motives in work..... Its origins remain dense. Its effects...deeply seeded into Singapore's daily life.


An adage goes that 'Singaporeans live to work while others work to live'... a phrase often used to ascertain or to compare with the quality of life in other countries (like Finland or Australia) when work-life balance is valued above all else. One senses a premium placed on achieving integration between body, mind, relationships and soul. And not all of us will have the opportunity to attain this ideal life. Perhaps, we has to live long within these cultures to determine this truth for ourselves. Much is also dependent on the personalities, attitudes and even the type of job you hold. Poverty rate remains a masked concept in many states. For some, it will be lodged as an inner spiritual struggle for a lifetime.

I recall what it was like to miss the daily grind of work during my stay in hospital...learning what it means to experience an ascent of will; not to take the mobile life for granted again upon discharge. I missed the little things; the mad rush of wearing the shoes of an accountant, event organiser, tutor, counsellor, friend, gardener, dispatch rider, secretary, mentor, manager, policeman, social worker, advertiser all in a day. That's teaching for you these days, no longer a chalk and board (or rather whiteboard and marker) kind of single-stranded existence.

The superficial struggle in many able folks like us is to try and achieve an overt command of their lives while neglecting the intensities that shape the course of our inner outlook and the deep blueprint of our very existence. I willed never to lose sight of reality, to find congruence in what i think, say and do and to value the creative & generative space that healthy solitude and relationships bring amid the rich tussle between proximity and distance that life & living necesitates.

"Get up cheerfully on days you have to work, if you can. And if you can't what keeps you from doing so? Is there something heavy that blocks the way? What do you have against the heaviness and difficulty? That it can kill you?

So it is powerful and strong. This much you know about it. And what do you know about things that are light and easy? Nothing. We have no memory whatsoever of that which was easy and light. So even if you could choose, ought you not actually choose what is difficult? Don't you feel how it is related to you? And are you not in agreement when you make this choice? Don't you think a little sapling would have an easier time by staying in the soil? Things that are light and things that are heavy don't actually exist. Life itself is heavy and difficult. And you don't actually want to live? Then you are mistaken in calling it your duty to take on difficulties. It's your survival instinct that pushes you to do it. So, what is duty then? It is duty to love what is difficult...You have to be there when it needs you."

rainer maria rilke