Barely surviving … or thriving
- Schalk Mouton
We are living life back to front. It’s time to draw up a new blueprint.
How long will this blizzard last, already? We’ve been stuck in this cupboard of a room for three days now! As South Africans travelling in Europe, the shoestring only goes so far and all things being equal, you want to spend as much time as you can exploring, adventuring, experiencing. A darn inconvenience, I should say!
We just paid the equivalent of two months’ medical aid premiums to take the Northern Lights tour in Norway, which, due to winds blowing snow horizontally across the Earth at the speed of sound so you can’t see an inch in front of you, has been cancelled. Asking for a refund only elicits the same response you’d get to a query from your medical aid provider.
Like many South Africans, when travelling to wealthier parts of the world, our routine is to find the cheapest Airbnb, shop for salads and a piece of protein in the local grocery store and walk just about everywhere with no thoughts of taxis.
However, when you’re stuck in a space the size of a closet for three days, that is where you get to know yourself and your partner, in ways that you never thought possible. You also start to think about things that you’ve never thought about before.
Like why, for instance, in Airbnbs, or hotels, is there never a towel rail in the bathroom? Or a soap dish in the shower? Why, for the love of dried fish, is there a beautiful, top-of-the-range oven but nothing resembling an oven tray or an ovenproof dish to be found, rendering the oven useless? In the bedroom, reading lights are either never in a convenient spot or they are so weak that you might as well be trying to read with your travel mask on.
It’s as if these places were designed by someone who never spent a day in an Airbnb. No thought has gone into the user experience. I often feel the same way about life. I strongly doubt – and feel free to disagree – that the blueprint for life was drawn up by someone who experienced it themselves! We have textbooks, white papers and podcasts by the boatloads, but are they actually useful?
Flip the script
I think that we live our lives back to front. We are born, go to school, university follows, we work ourselves – literally – to death, and then retire. When all our hormones are raging and we have the energy to climb mountains, we don’t have a cent to spare, so we must pin our butts to a chair and study.
On the other hand, in retirement, when we have all the time in the world, are a lot more interested in learning new things, and have money to spend, we have very little energy, or the body for it. How about swapping these around? Travel when you’re young! Study when you’re done!
Yes, I know. It’s not practical and it is a white loaf under the armpit problem. But if whoever designed life had lived before they drew up the blueprint, I’m positive that they could have made it work!
The daily grind
We live life chasing the unattainable. Our priorities are all wrong. We spend at least eight hours a day at work, sitting uncomfortably, staring at a screen or doing something that we don’t enjoy, spending time with people we don’t necessarily want to be with, while the rest of the waking day – four hours at most – we have to divide between everything else that matters – family, friends, exercise and hobbies.
I know we have to work to earn a living, but work, I believe, should not be our first priority.
Numerous studies – including from Wits – have shown that for humans to really thrive, what matters most is exercise and movement, social life, a healthy diet and a good night’s sleep. If you get that right, you are on the right track. But that’s not what the blueprint tells us.
You wake up grumpy in the morning because you can’t sleep worrying about problems at work. You rush to work, grabbing a garage pie and a Red Bull on the way. You eat, while sitting alone for two hours in traffic, the radio presenter the closest friend you have. You head into the office and you’re hit by another crisis that ties you up for the next 12 hours and keeps you awake again that night. No wonder we are so mentally and physically burnt out by October that we party hard over December, just to hit repeat in January.
Pause for thought
Nothing about our lives is designed to encourage us to live “right”. Instead of making it safe and convenient to get on a bicycle and ride the 4km to work, our roads and transport systems deter us from moving, so we get in the car, windows rolled up. We are distrustful of strangers, so we don’t connect with others. It’s easier – and cheaper – to pick up something ultra-processed for dinner than to cook a healthy meal and so we keep ourselves going with handfuls of multivitamins and prescription pills.
Instead of hitting repeat, I think it’s time to hit “pause”. Work should not be our first priority. It should be fighting for a place at number four, at the most. Our priority should be living a life in which we connect, move, and eat properly and take care of ourselves.
And yes, I know. First world problems. We need money to survive, and for that we need to work, and very few of us are lucky enough to love our jobs. If that’s you, then great. But work shouldn’t be at the expense of the things we should be spending time on.
- Schalk Mouton is Senior Communications Officer at Wits University and CURIOS.TY Editor.
- This article first appeared in?CURIOS.TY,?a research magazine produced by?Wits Communications?and the?Research Office.
- Read more in the 20thissue, themed #Thrive, which explores what it truly means to flourish — across a lifespan, within communities, and on and with our planet.