BENEATH THE SKYLINE

WORKING TOO MUCH

Deborah Good

The cold was eating through my five layers of clothing as I stood on the train platform, cursing an inadequate public transportation system—as though my anger would either make the train come sooner or, at least, coax my cells into an irascible fury of warmth.

It had been another long day at the office of the nonprofit where I work, a magazine that, in its own small way, is transforming the world. Now I was headed home to stuff envelopes with a group of volunteers, preparing a fundraising mailing for that same organization. I work too much, I thought to myself as I rooted in my bag for a pack of gum that turned out to be empty. And it’s miserably cold out here.

Sigh. Here I am, just another self-proclaimed martyr for another worthy cause. Everyone I work with at The Other Side magazine believes in creating spaces of retreat and sabbath in our lives. We believe God lives in those spaces and calls us to them. While the surrounding culture hums with increased productivity and values hard work above relationships, we cry out that a 50- or 60-hour work week (and debatably, even a 40-hour week) kills the soul, the family, the fabric of community that cloaks our lives with meaning.

Yet we have found no way to keep our small operation running except through sweat and tired tears—and many, many of those overtime hours.

It’s not just us. People across the country work overtime hours or two jobs just to (barely) make ends meet, others because employers found it cheaper to lay off some workers to avoid paying benefits while working the remaining employees overtime. Still others in highly competitive office environments work more hours to better their chances of promotion.

Whatever our reasons, statistics show that the average American works nine weeks more per year than the average European. Who decided 40 was the magic number—that working fewer than 40 hours a week, without an excuse like kids or sickness, must mean laziness? I know of a French couple who were exhausted trying to keep up with our pace of life.

Forty years ago, sociologists predicted technological advances would lead to more leisure time in the U.S., so much that filling our leisure time would become a societal problem. Instead, the amount we work has increased steadily since the 1960s.

It is a puzzle to me. We aren’t all workaholics by nature. What kind of world—what kind of economic system—would let enough be enough? Some companies, competing in a capitalist marketplace, work their employees to unhealthy extremes, whether in maquilas across the border or in polished, professional office buildings in the States.

The nonprofit world is no less harried. Vision-driven organizations are commonly underfunded, understaffed, and overworked. The situation is made harder by an ethic of self-sacrifice and a martyr complex. When do we say that an organization—no matter how crucial the mission—is doing more harm than good as it slowly eats the lives of those who work there, their families, their friends? A hard question. And while it has come up at The Other Side, no one likes to raise it.

I am 23 and some days fear I have joined the masses of overworked Americans. I have no aspirations to a workaholic lifestyle. While I have absorbed a "Protestant work ethic" from somewhere, personal experience has taught me life is most meaningful when I slow down; when I have time to stay at the table long after supper is over, talking until the food is cold; when I take time to sit on my bed and stare at the wall; when I am not too hurried to talk with the man asking me for money on my way to the bus stop.

Working less would free me up to be a better friend and neighbor, to explore other passions and interests, to actually vacuum my bedroom, and to write columns like this one without wondering when I’ll ever find the time. We as a culture have forgotten that rest is perhaps the most basic medicine for treating any ailment. We need to give ourselves permission to stop doing and start being. Even our vacation time often involves busy itineraries and lots of planning.

For several months during my senior year of college, I made a commitment to myself. Every Friday, I rushed out of Macroeconomics at the end of the period and home to my apartment. Sometimes I stashed Jane Kenyon, Mary Oliver, a notebook, and water in the bag I had bought six months earlier from a farmer in Chiapas, Mexico, threw the leather strap around my shoulders, and bicycled to solitary destinations undetermined. Other times I simply found a quiet library corner.

The only requirements were that I be alone for one hour, with a pen and notebook, and that—if creativity ran its course—I attempt to write a poem. Those fall afternoons provided a sacred space for me to step outside academia and spill onto paper the world I saw through a poet’s eyes. They kept me grounded during a hectic time of life.

For all my talk of sabbath, I know the work must still get done. Farmers probably understand this as much as anyone. My grandfather, 85, has a small vineyard and orchard. Family members tell him to slow down, stop working so hard. But he knows pruning vines and picking peaches keeps him healthy and energized. He tells his worried children, "I rest while I work."

Rest while I work? Perhaps I need a new way of thinking that doesn’t draw such a clear line between work and leisure. The Incas didn’t make such a distinction. Today intentional communities in the States, committed to creating a more just world, live and work and play without ever being "on" or "off." Their life is their work. Their work is their life.

Until a different world is possible—or my circumstances change—I will have to find ways to cope. Where can I create those sacred, solitary spaces in an otherwise busy life? I can start by being fully present at my job, understanding it to be integrated with the rest of my life, instead of imagining all the other ways I could be spending my time. I also think about working part-time in the future and choosing a lifestyle that would require only a part-time income.

I look for small pauses in a day’s rush. Sometimes I take a short break from work to walk around the neighborhood. And I take public transportation rather than buy a car. While this means it usually takes me longer to get where I am going, it forces me to plan for enough time to get there. The hour I spend getting home from work by train and trolley gives me time to read, write, stare out the window, and clear my head. That hour is sabbath.

I live in a paradox. I work too much—for an organization that believes in wholesome, slow-paced living. My head knows staying healthy means resting more, but my heart doesn’t see how to cut corners. And now I write about slowing down in a column due yesterday, instead of talking to my housemates or going to bed. Entangled in the irony of it all, I commit myself to creating spaces in my everyday life for pause, for relationship, for a new awareness of the world around me. I commit myself to finding sabbath.

—Deborah Good, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hopes her life is not always so busy. See www.timeday.org to learn of the "Take-Back-Your-Time" movement.