Live to work....Work to live....

Efren and his friends that he went to college with in Venezuela keep up with each other through email since they are now spread out in several different countries around the world. That's what happens when you're an exchange student and meet your future wife, I guess. ;) The topic they have been discussing recently was basically that people in our society today, for the most part, live to work and work to live. Because of the way the world works the "work week" is Monday through Friday 8-5 or 9-6 what have you with Saturdays and Sundays off. If you're lucky your job MIGHT allow you 2-3 weeks of vacation time a year....out of 52. Step back and think about it for a second. I know I hadn't really ever considered it strange because this is commonplace. We grow up, graduate college, and then start our careers, all the while knowing that at some point we will enter the mighty work force. The guys started talking about this and realized how backwards it seems. We all spend soooo much time working, when do we get to enjoy each other and live life...not live work. There are professions that are the exception, nursing of course being one of them. Not only do we only work 3 times a week but we get to make our own schedule. For the most part we work just as many hours, but we get several days off at a time. What if the rest of the working world was like that? What if companies let their employees work 10-12 hours a day but only 3 or 4 times a week?! On top of that, what if we ALL got to pick which 3 days of the week we wanted so that the other four could be spent with our families? At my current position at the hospital I am required to work a certain amount of hours per six weeks. It can be anytime within those six weeks. If I cram them all in at the beginning, I could have up to 5 weeks completely off. I am SO blessed with that opportunity....but what if all jobs were like that?! Get your work done and then go enjoy your family or take a mission trip, or as our friend on the "Cash For Gold" commercial did, take "the vacation of a lifetime!" (Sorry, we only have 5 channels, daytime TV is where it's at, and the same Medicare and Platt College commercials are played C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-L-Y).
Sometimes it seems like we live to work, and for some people, they work to simply live. I don't think it will ever change because society says that is the "norm."I wish it would though. Life is too short to work so hard and miss something. Make every moment count.

Just think, if we had flexible schedules, Wal-mart wouldn't be so hellish on Saturdays and Sundays and there wouldn't be such a thing as rush hour!