First, thank you for all the good thoughts and prayers for Maddy. She is home and recovering nicely!
My neighbor had a great job. He was working for a large financial firm as a middle manager. He had to get up early and come home late some nights, but he had a nice lifestyle. Then, the great Madoff collapse came and he was one of 3,000 laid off. Imagine going into work and having the pink slip. Lovely. Not a thing that is too uncommon these days.
So his wife switched from part time to full time. He was "stay at home dad". He started his new gig in March and now he is looking for a new job, except…he kind of likes the slower lifestyle. He likes being home. He made a comment to me that has stuck in my brain. "If you have kids, you really need to not work so you can have time for yourself and your kids." He is right.
It makes me think. I wish I could have more time. I wish we weren’t a go-go-go society.
How can we slow the world down? any ideas?
Thing is, even when the world was “slower,” people still worked a lot out of sheer necessity. 150 years ago, it was 14 hours on the farm or at the factory or mill, then home to sleep so you could get up and do it all again, every day except for Sunday. Women who didn’t work outside the home put in that same 14-hour day inside it — doing the family’s laundry alone was a backbreaking all-day task. (Check out “Never Done: A History of American Housework” — it totally put the amount of cooking and cleaning I do into perspective for me.) None of this is to say that wanting more time isn’t a totally justifiable desire, because heaven knows I feel the same way. But the problem of time spent working vs. time doing what you want to do is definitely not restricted to modern life. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.