Against the Cartesian Myth of Work/Life Balance

2 hours ago7 min read2 comments

I was talking to a friend the other day, a brilliant graphic designer who’d just pulled three all-nighters for a client launch, and she told me, with a strange mix of pride and exhaustion, 'I’m such a workaholic. ' That word, worn like a badge of honor, got me thinking.We’ve been living with this self-inflicted wound for centuries, a divide so deep in our culture that we don't even question its origin. It all goes back to René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who famously declared 'I think, therefore I am,' effectively cleaving the mind from the body and setting the stage for our modern malaise.We’ve simply swapped his duality for our own: work versus life. The very phrase 'work/life balance' is a trap inherited from the industrial age, a model that asked workers to clock in and leave a part of themselves at the factory gate.It demands we live in fragments, a portion of the person for labor and another, supposedly more authentic part, for everything else. But who are we outside of our work? The artist isn't just painting in the studio; she's seeing compositions in the way light falls on her breakfast table.The teacher isn't just lecturing in a classroom; he's explaining the world to his child at bedtime. This artificial segregation is why we feel so perpetually drained and unfulfilled, trying to balance two scales that were never meant to be separate.I remember interviewing a retired carpenter who told me he never felt a divide; he saw the same care and intention in crafting a beautiful dovetail joint as he did in tending his garden. His hands were an extension of his whole being, whether at the workbench or the dinner table.This isn't about working less, but about working differently—integrating our passions, our relationships, our moments of quiet reflection into the very fabric of our professional endeavors, so that life doesn't start when work ends, but is the continuous thread that gives our work meaning. We need to move beyond the Cartesian myth and embrace a more holistic existence, where we are whole people, not partitioned employees.

#work life balance

#creativity

#André Gregory

#Richard Avedon

#philosophy

#featured

#Cartesian dualism

#art and life

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