Quotes and citations are a thing of their own. Today, they appear all over the place, especially on social media. There is a lot of motivating, inspiring and cheering going on, so much that the impression arises that there is abolutely no negative energy in the whole wide world whatsoever and that the whole population of Instaland is in a permanent state of permanent mental ecstasy. Sunsets, the caribbean, palm trees and hovering above it all the oracle called "time out".
That's where I have a small problem, me. I really don't care who is posting what on which channel, because: I don't have to look at it. That's a right people seem to invoke far too rarely: There is no obligation to look at anything on the internet, to take things serious or even get mad about it.
But back on topic. Why do I have a problem with a "timeout"?
Perhaps because it scares me that these days, it seems to be one of the major goals of our time to be able to take a break as soon as possible. We don't work anymore to have a roof over our head and to feed, but to go on vacation, enjoy our time "off", in short: we work ourselves to death to have the chance of escaping our lives.
I often asked myself whether there was something wrong with me. I have never left Europe, absent the training camps on the Canarian Islands. I have been abroad a few times, but I have to admit that I prefer travelling to places where I feel, well, at home. Where I feel like I could live. I never had the urge or the need to escape my work or my life in general. To need a timeout.
To me, it seems way too close to religious fundamentalism: Suffer here and now so you have a better next life. Suffer on the job so you earn your break.
In sports, I have to explain to my athletes again and again that they will only be successful when they will prove the necessary consequence. In sports, you won't succeed if you tell yourself that you have earned to not train a few days after a block of perhaps three weeks of straight work. If you have ambition, this won't do.
Why do we think it normal in our day to day life to work ourselves nearly to collapse and then, more or less as a reward, spend the hard earned money in "luxury" (which I came to translate with "stuff you don't need"), only to be allowed to pick up where we left and cripple ourselves with work again to earn the next dose of money, the next break?
I don't have an answer to this, but these were my thoughts today. All I know is: I don't want this. I don't want a life from which I need to escape. It's too short for that.
Who is with me?
Yours,
Fabian
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