Empty Soul, and Tons of Regret
As I was scrolling social media last night, I stumbled upon something that stopped me in my tracks. It was a distraught-looking middle-aged man staring into the bathroom mirror, with the following text plastered across the screen: "30 years of service to a job, and all you have to show for it is an empty house, empty soul, and tons of regret." I'm not going to share the post, as my thoughts aren't as much about this particular man as they are about the broader phenomenon.
I've seen this look on too many faces. I've heard these words from too many mouths. So many people (especially men) are suffering in silence.
One of the root causes of this phenomenon is our perspective on work:
We generally view work as a necessary evil. We expect work to suck, then just like clockwork, it sucks.
If work sucks, then the objective becomes the race to someday quit working (i.e., retirement).
If work is supposed to suck and our goal is to get to the finish line as quickly as possible, we unintentionally create a self-fulfilling prophecy in the selection of our job(s).
When we spend half of our waking hours at work, and said work is soul-sucking, then there's probably not a lot of gas left in the tank for the things we do actually care about. Thus, those things also suffer. Our relationships, our hobbies, and our passions.
When we finally "win" the race and get to retirement, we realize this life of leisure wasn't actually the answer after all. That brings on an entirely new level of pain and emptiness.
Enter the regrets.
The solution to this is unbelievably simple, yet so very difficult. It's called aggressively and violently pursuing meaning each and every day. Every day matters. Weekend days matter. Work days matter. Holidays matter. Vacation days matter. Young days matter. Middle-aged days matter. Older days matter.
But if we live our lives as if half our waking hours don't matter because we at least have the rest, the pain starts to bleed into all the days. Instead, what if all the days mattered? What if we found just as much meaning in our job as we did in our home life? What if our work provided a similar richness that our weekends provide?
It's simple. It's difficult. It's attainable. It's worth it.
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