A person that I met recently said to me while walking down Oxford street on a sunny Saturday afternoon: “Antigoni, I think what everyone is interested in nowadays, is the work life balance. How do I keep in touch with those that I enjoy being around, and fulfil my career endeavours as well as work responsibilities at the same time?” I felt inspired by this request, and I actually related a lot to what he was thinking. I said that this is the first article I am going to write ever, and it is an issue that concerns me personally too. Valuing relationships was always part of who I am as a person, but also as a psychotherapist, and how much importance holds still in the way I have been trying to guide my clients to navigate towards attachments they build with others, and how these evolve over a period of time, how they learn to reflect upon important relationships with others and the impact that this has on their wellbeing, the way they reflect on those but also process the dynamics that are present in those. It was time to explore this deeply, through the lens of dealing with connecting while working in the modern times.
There are a lot of conflicts on this matter, especially if you live in London in 2023. I meet a lot of people everyday, on the cafe, on the street, at work, on the bus. Some of them are neighbours, people I recognise their faces due to using the same means of transport every day, and some completely strangers to me. Sometimes people are open to chat, sometimes not. Once someone in the underground felt open enough for a short chat, occasioned by the train strikes, I came across the following statement: “It is always us who suffer, not the government”, which showed a deep reflective process of how much people work, how many bills they pay, and how much they finally self evaluate and measure their own perceived degree of enjoyment and relaxation, even on a Sunday day out with the family, while thinking through why workers would strike for a series of days, and the phenomenon becomes more frequent than it used to be. It makes simple average workers even wonder about their own (financial/mental/professional) suffering….
The last couple of months there is a vibe that everyone is so immersed into work life. London rhythms are extremely fast from Monday to Friday: none has time really to waste or pace things up. People wake up very early to go to their workplaces, run from underground to train, from train station to buses, endless marathon. They have a busy day at work, meetings, appointments with clients, managers calls, documenting incidents, answering to emails, and so forth. Then everyone heads back home, tired and exhausted from the day. People live far away. Different work patterns. Someone works a 12 hours shift, someone else is a full time student with a part time job after university lectures, someone is just doing work shift after work shift because of inflation and cost of living going up over the last 6 months. In any case, all these factors in combination make stress increasing significantly around work life. Instability in the private and public sector, whilst organisations become more demanding around qualifications, accreditations, training requirements and other characteristics that the ideal candidate has to obtain in order to get a role, cause further insecurity to the already stressed new employees and fills them with anxiety and fear about the future. Are they going to make it on the next interview, are their qualifications enough to get a place to the company that have applied for, what are the next professional steps they have to take, is the salary enough to cover their essential monthly expenses as well as all the things that they have dreamt of having in their early 20s, 30s, or 40s? The list can really go on…
At the same time, the same working person that carries these stresses and anxieties on a 5 day week basis, strives for human connection and interaction. It is known to everyone that humans over the centuries could not live without the company of one another. This seems like a luxury in the reality we currently experience. Everyone seems to be unable to meet after work. People have changed priorities and things that would look into engaging in after a long and tiring shift. Many are talking about going to the gym to decompress, and others want to isolate themselves at home, not seeing anyone at all. Tiredness levels hit the roof, but also energy needs to be released physically so as people to wind down. Where is the connection in all this? A few people want to meet up after work, how possible is this really, in a city like this? Lets do a quick reality check, coming again from personal experiences… “Do we live near, do we live far, let’s leave it for another day, we can do it tomorrow, if I dont do overtime, if the train comes on time, if the pub I was talking to you about is open by the time you finish”… so many ifs. It happened to me, trying to see a friend for over a month, calling him frustrated about him not being able to stick to the appointment that we have made numerous times. He was sadly expressing how dissatisfied he is that he ends up sleeping on the couch every time that the long lasting online meetings come to an end… I paused and thought for a second…I did not know if I had to be angry or not. All I realised at that moment was that the times have changed for us. Did we always used to live like that and we could manage better? Did things change so dramatically, that people are nowadays unable to see socialising and spending time with their friend or significant other as just meeting a basic need? What about the mindset that the modern society carries?- “priority is to be efficient and effective at your job, do the rest on the weekend”. I acknowledge that this makes me unhappy, when I think of where we currently are with the work life balance. A feeling of despair runs through me.. but then I also realise, I am already part of this system… and I have been where my friend is too, here, but also while living in Greece, 6 years ago.
I think these thoughts play up a lot in many people’s minds. Everyone has a need to meet, people seem to have put aside their own natural needs, to meet other work related ones. It sometimes feels that if you engage more in one, you are going to miss out from the other, and vice versa. I could say that it feels like an unfair game- you sense that somehow you are going to lose something either way, no matter how smart you play. It is known that modern people want to accomplish as many things as possible, but as they become older, they also want to connect in meaningful ways as much as possible- they look for quality times with people that make them feel comfortable, attractive, nice and positive. The balance feels very hard, and most of the time, for the average person, sticking to the routine, makes things less complicated. It feels like everyone has somehow compromised with this way of being, way of living, way of communicating. It all feels very term related, time related, location related, circumstances related. There are so many restrictions and obstacles in place. But people are still people, and they need and seek emotional, physical, mental, intellectual, and sexual connection… I would not like to conclude on anything.. All I would like to leave here is one exercise, which I think will help everyone reflect and delve into the work life balance in a more effective way; On a scale 1 to 10, rate how many times during a week, you have done something that made you engage in a meaningful, creative or fun way with another human being that you value in some sort of way, enjoy being around and like to spend time with. Try to be honest with the answers that you give back to yourself. Then think if the times that you managed to list in your head, were enough for you to feel calm, at peace of mind, kept you
away from work problems and issues, made you forget about your financial difficulties… How much time really you had to drift away from the work aspect of yourself, to just turn this aspect of yourself off your system? Then try to think back and bring to mind the quality of this interaction. How did it impact your mental and physical health? What is the feeling that has left you with? What are the sensations that you can feel in your body, as you recall the social engagement scenario? The answers to all the above, have to be your guide for the decisions that you will need to make from that point on… If the answers that you gave felt satisfactory to you, then this means you probably are on the right track with balancing things out. If you feel that something did not sit right, it is time to dig deeper. Because after all, balance is a matter of values, priorities, and meaning that we put into our own personal lived reality. What matters most to us? Do we like to achieve strong social, intimate, friendly relationships, or are we happy with just a chit chat on our way home, with our colleague? If this is the case, become curious about this, try not to judge yourself… and then envision how you would like to shape your life aspect, that excludes the word work, entirely and fully. And picture yourself in the centre of it. In the centre of needs, desires, wants, wishes, and priorities….
