Stop stressing about your work, you are going to die
To truly living every day of our lives
A lot of us have very stressful days at work, 8 hours or more in front of a computer, worrying about some meeting in the morning, finishing up before the deadline. Thinking “it’s okay if I spend my day working, I’ll still enjoy the weekend, the holidays, my retirement…”.
In the book “on the shortness of life”, Seneca says:
You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business?
Not because we don’t know when we are going to die, we have to throw all our plans away, and just live for today without any regard for the future. But throwing away a day in our lives thinking we will have many days ahead can result in throwing away a big part of our life.
According to a study made in Gettysburg College, a third of our life is dedicated to working. If we take into account that another third is spent in our sleep, we have a remaining 30% of our life to spend however we want. What does this mean? It means that every time you work extra hours, you are taking that time from that resting 30% to explore life beyond work.
So what if you love your job so much this doesn’t matter to you?
It is awesome to have a job you love, and there is the saying:
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
This is partially true, if you love what you do, you are truly living that 30% of your life you are spending at work. But take into consideration if you want to spend more than a third of your life on this. Every one of us has to choose what path to follow in this life, knowing that we are just humans and we have the need to love, to grow, to experience new things every day, not waiting until we are done with work at 60 to make that happen (because it may not!).
We cannot predict how many days we have left, and it’s up to us how we want to spend them, but to live today you need to follow your heart and not to save the joy of life for later. Be sure to enjoy today, because today it’s all we have.
