harmony

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I have targeted a compartmentalized "work-life balance". This is the common wisdom. Now, do your work, and later, have your fun. The notion extends further: Now, be indoors to do your work, and later, you may go outside to refresh your spirit. Now, live in and travel through places stripped of their native ecosystems, their nature. Later, drive to a natural place for one afternoon and be renewed.

This is life as a set of bars on a chart. As each dips low, we focus our efforts and top it up. The model oversimplifies life. It assumes spending enough time on various activities is entirely sufficient for holistic well-being.

It's an excellent place to start. I feel immense benefits from spending time outdoors, unplugging, meditating, exercising creativity. But I must invest effort in evaluating, planning, and doing each. My main gripe is this: the bar-chart model ignores the possibility of a sustaining environment. Such an environment includes non-human life, the built environment, and the intangible systems surrounding us. Can I walk in the shade of native, bird-filled trees on my way to work? Do local roads and industry allow me clean air and quiet? Are there jobs nearby? How easy is it to make friends?

These are the questions I want positive answers to. Living according to the bar-chart model fails to influence their answers. Maybe an ardent activist can influence one.

I prefer a truer model of life. I shouldn't have to plan every hour of each day to maintain my well-being. I want to live a life that integrates those disparate activities into my environment. With just a little effort, an impulse, I'd like to move through natural and artificial splendor, through community and solitude, through leisure and focus. And I want to have little idea I'm doing it.

I'm unimpressed by work-life balance. What I want, between all the nebulous, interdependent parts of life, is harmony.