EcoChic Thought For The Day-To Do or To Be

 

by Marianne Nouwens

A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a girlfriend about how the crisis had changed our work. She had been working 60-hour weeks, for months, at a non-profit organization, to get through the difficult economic times and simply because there was so much to do.

She said that the worst thing about the last months, however, was not the financial crunch, but the exhaustion she felt and the anger she put on all her colleagues and family and friends during that time.

 I know I’ve done it too. In the name of the love for nature and with the environmental crisis in our faces every day, it is easy to justify over-working. But what irony, that while I am trying to create a better, healthier, and fair world for everyone - a world in which we want our children to be happy and safe ever after - I am a source of stress and unhappiness myself.

 My friend said that she believes now that as we are creating a healthier food system, the endless work hours as we are striving for true sustainability, and whatever else we do to our bodies and environments in the wake of our burn-out, is simply another form of violence, a hidden one. She says it is silently accepted and justified by the “importance of our work”.

 Yes our work is critical, and important, and while there is never enough money, never enough time to get all the things done that we must achieve in life, I, from now on, will make an extra mindful commitment to put my effort into effortlessness - to remember that at the end of the day, To Be is so much more important than To Do.

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