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Some of you may recall, as children or teenagers, feeling a whimsical and almost desperate kind of yearning to reach adulthood, go to college, get a full-time job, and buy a home of your own.
While I, too, wanted autonomy and to become self-sufficient, I never really felt excited about growing up, especially considering the metrics for success that society has so rigidly laid out for us.
Having been raised in what was then most likely considered a typical middle-class household in the 90s with one child and two incomes, I nevertheless watched both of my parents work sufficiently hard enough to pay the bills and keep a roof over my head. Yes, I was an only child, but I wasn’t exactly spoiled rotten or born with a silver spoon, and I most certainly had parents who modelled the value of hard work, discipline, and maintaining a certain level of financial security from a relatively young age.
However, although I undoubtedly understood the necessity of earning enough money to survive and even live comfortably, I also knew I wanted the contentment that comes with living a lifestyle that feels entirely and unabashedly authentic to oneself, one that also included time to wander, create, to contemplate, and to simply revel in the beauty and wonders of the natural world—four of my most favourite things, by far.
I knew, from a relatively young age, that I didn’t want constant stress and busyness; rather, I wanted more peace and to be able to live my life on my own terms.
Somehow, even at the ages of 16 and 17, I had an inkling that our culture and society were mostly quite messed up and that human beings weren’t meant to exist and function as mere cogs in a money-making machine. Yes, I knew that money was essential, but even so, I could have listed off at least five-to-ten things that I wanted just as much if not more than mere comfort. Some of these things included finding true love, having a generous amount of downtime in between periods of labour, doing work that is meaningful and fulfilling to me—even if it didn’t offer me $90,000 to $100,000 per year—and time, space, and energy to ponder life’s deeper questions.
Even back then, I understood the importance of rest and play, and I certainly didn’t want to burn out before the age of 50.
One thing was for sure: I knew that if any job cost me my peace, that lifestyle was for me a bit too expensive.
However, I also knew that, at that time, people often wore their overtime hours like a cloak of honour, as though it signified strength of character and their potential for long-term success, whatever that meant for them. I also realized that corporations were exploitative and greedy, driving up the costs on basic necessities and making people have to work that much harder to attain them.
As a result, by the time I hit my early 20s, I was already dreading the next few decades of my existence on this planet, knowing that the 8-to-5 model was standard. I really couldn’t imagine living that way day-in-day-out for years on end just to be able to one day retire and hope that I was still vital enough to do the things I had always longed to do but couldn’t find the time and energy for while I was too busy toiling away my youth all in the name of comfort and the veneer of security.
To this day, I’ll admit that this system still doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. After all, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, most of us would admit that we would hardly aspire to attain something or acquiesce to a manner of life that didn’t make us feel happy or free, and yet nevertheless, we conform to a lifestyle riddled with undue stress and that keeps us feeling bound and chained to senseless consumerism for the better part of our years just so that we just might get to experience a semblance of contentment and freedom later on, only to get there and realize that we can never actually put a price on the things that truly count that we invariably missed out on while we were too busy to really appreciate, enjoy, and take care of them in the first place.
Unfortunately, though, as we all know—and especially today—most people don’t really feel they have a choice in the matter. With the astronomically high costs of living, the vast majority of us—and especially those with young children—are often stuck working at least one soulless job just to be able to pay rent and keep food on the table. Furthermore, things don’t seem to be getting any easier for us on the whole.
Welcome to late-stage-capitalism, folks. It is a complete and utter train wreck just waiting to happen.
Just the other day, I read a startling article in Newsweek. It said that about one-third of Americans are now using PTO hours just to go home and crash for a few days. In addition, the survey revealed that this was especially true for people who earned significantly higher incomes.
To quote Rosie Osmun, a certified sleep science coach at Amerisleep: “Burnout is so widespread that people are burning vacation days on basic recovery instead of new experiences. This shift shows that rest has become a necessity, not a luxury.”
Wait. Wasn’t rest always a necessity and not a luxury, or am I missing something here?
What a sad state of affairs. How long can we keep abandoning our basic needs and pushing ourselves until we downright collapse from the exhaustion of hustling and striving 24/7?
I still firmly believe that none of us are put here on this beautiful and abundant earth to trade nearly all of our time and energy to prove ourselves to others and to fill the pockets of billionaires. While the spirit is undoubtedly eternal and unlimited, the human parts of us—the mind and body—are most definitely finite and, depending on how we treat them, prone to disease. These human parts of us weren’t meant to function optimally under near-constant stress and pressure. Rest and respite are most definitely not luxuries for the mind and body; they are outright nonnegotiable if we are to prosper in this form and on this planet.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
That is a common phrase I have heard some people say. But what about the time in between the cradle and the grave? What quality of life do you expect to have while you’re here?
Do you want to run on fumes and cortisol and denigrate the vessel Source gave you to carry out your own dreams if you even have any left?
I’ve often wondered what made us all so susceptible to this absurd way of life, and to believing that our value, worth, and even our overall character is tied to how much we can acquire and produce. Of course, economic, political, and social factors undoubtedly play their parts, but for a long time, I have also noticed how individual people become visibly embarrassed or ashamed when they admit that they’ve been resting or taking it easy and not being as hyper-productive as they feel they should be. Admittedly, I, too, have been guilty of this on more than one occasion, but I am just now beginning to care less and less about what other people think nowadays. After all, it’s my life and my health, and no one has had to walk in my shoes. No one ever will, either.
Somewhere along the way, though, most of us have abandoned this attitude, internalizing more than a few limiting beliefs—one of them being that if we are not almost constantly striving for bigger, better, faster, and smarter in copious ways, then we are not deserving of love and respect. Perhaps not even our own love and respect.
In short, our sense of self-worth is directly tied to our output and productivity.
Unfortunately, these kinds of beliefs have become so commonplace that nearly every single one of us, regardless of income, creed, gender, background, and culture, have taken them onboard.
On the other hand, people who prefer a more slow, intentional, and minimalist way of life are often accused of being lazy, selfish, unrealistic, or unduly privileged.
Personally speaking, I prefer the slower, more minimalist and intentional way of life for a number of reasons. For one thing, living with unrelenting fatigue for years on end since the age of 23 or 24 pretty much forced me to make up my mind and get my priorities straight. At that time, had I worked a full-time job, I would not have been able to function optimally. No matter how much sleep I got, I was always tired. I also developed chronic digestive issues that left my gut motility compromised and made me more susceptible to conditions like SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth), despite a clean diet and no drinking or smoking of any kind.
No, neither of these conditions were serious or life-threatening, but they did make it more challenging to wake up feeling peppy and to function to the extent that our society expects us to—especially with the lack of energy!
So, over the proceeding years, I chose to work mostly from home, set my own hours according to when I functioned best, and take on several different regular gigs and side-hustles that I found particularly rewarding and paid me a decent amount of money per hour.
These days, I also choose to spend any spare time I have reading uplifting books, walking in nature, working on myself so that I can be the best person I am capable of being, and ever-so-slowly-but-surely working on a creative idea and project that has, over the years, gone through a few shifts and revisions. On occasion, I also enjoy going on short trips and what they call “stay-cations” far from the city to recharge my batteries and commune more deeply with the lakes, the birds, and the trees.
No, despite all of the above, my life has been far from an easy ride—spiritual awakening and ego-death included—but I now believe that all of it has given me an amount of wisdom, grace, and discernment that I may not have had otherwise. For that, I am especially grateful.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I would love to have a bit more money, but if having more money accompanies more pressure, stress, and a betrayal of myself and my values, I won’t do it—or, at the very least, not for long.
Health, I have come to learn, is a basic and often taken-for-granted form of wealth. Without it, you can’t do too much.
Furthermore, I do not tie a sense of self-worth to what I do.
Yes, I enjoy mentoring, coaching, and looking after children, helping them to acquire certain mindsets and life-skills, writing, and occasionally working in the arts, but none of these roles are expansive enough to define me, and I am a person with many interests, goals, and a lot of potential in different areas. I have no “specialty.” We are all meant to specialize in several different areas rather than just one or two—after all, we are complex beings!
What I am can’t be limited to any one thing in particular.
All in all, I am in love with life first and foremost—but not with all of the hardships, rules, and regulations around time and money that we humans have constructed. Most of all, I love my freedom because the soul itself is innately free, and I live to serve my soul and not to preserve the angst of my ego. I also love trees, mountains, lakes, oceans, and rivers, and I want to see them and spend as much time as I can amidst them all for the short time I have here. I also love authenticity, self-expression, and using my imagination, which is a gift we are all endowed with that can truly benefit us if we learn to harness it and use it wisely.
Life is indeed a gift, and we are only here for 70, 80, and if we are lucky enough, 90 years, and I intend to make the best out of this human experience and get to know my Self—not the conditional self, but the essential one—and who could put a price tag on that? That, after all, is where deeper joy and abundance can be found. You could have millions and billions of dollars and none of it will ever be enough unless you’ve found a deeper form of wealth within that doesn’t need a single penny more. Only then can you truly and unequivocally be free.
Until then, you will always either consciously or unconsciously be using people, places, and things to fill some perceived void, no matter how materially successful you happen to be.
So, as uncommon as peace and contentment are in today’s world, perhaps we should begin our own quiet but powerful revolution: that is, to measure success by the measure of one’s wisdom and peace.
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