Swinkers of the World Unite! |
No one on their death-bed ever expresses regret that they did not spend more time in the office. More often, in my experience, people regret that they did not pay more attention to family relations and friendships.
The two things, which bring joy in life, are love and work but the balance between them has to be right. Work should not be dismissed as "the curse of the drinking clases". In the myth of the Paradise Garden, Adam and Eve are set to work before the Fall. It is only after their expulsion, however, that work turns into "toil" and human beings begin their long history of earning their living "by the sweat of their brow".
Chaucer, that great London poet, uses a most expressive word to describe this soul scarring drudgery. Human beings are doomed to "swinke", a verb whose even more ominous past participle is "swonken".
In 21st century London, of course, daily toil is most usually not in the fields and woods but in the office, at the wood veneer of the desk in front of the screen.
In recent times, however, love and work seem to have got even further out of balance. Thirty years ago, I can remember all kinds of anxious debates about what we were going to do with all the leisure time that technological advance would open up. This new dawn has not materialised and proves to be just as much a chimaera as the paperless office. The welcome advent of women in senior positions in the office has done little to change the culture.
If anything the quality of life for office workers over the past ten years has deteriorated. In the City of London, I see day by day the arrival of heroic individuals who have left home before the children were stirring to endure a grisly journey by public transport. Primed and motivated by the Today programme they have already locked into the liturgical life of our modern society. The real god is, of course, the economy and each day there is a weird ritual of taking the temperature of god as the chant is intoned. "The Hang Sen is rising; the Dow Jones is falling but the Footsie is stable."
The asceticism of so many modern office workers is very remarkable. Like ancient votaries we take our places before our screens and tune in like mediaeval monks going about the opus Dei.
The world of modern work is, however, full of suspicion. In an increasingly litigious and risk averse environment, distrust is sown, regulation multiplies and compliance departments are swollen. Relating to the world via the screen degrades the capacity to communicate in ways that enhance trust and deepen the enjoyment of collaboration.
The reduction of staff and new techniques for extracting more work from human resources also diminish the time for creative thought and there is a hardening of corporate arteries. The work that needs to be done today is performed more efficiently but the erosion of space to contemplate tomorrow make our organisations very vulnerable.
This is very much exacerbated by the new puritanism. Trust and profound communication are learned in the lunch hour but macho-management creates an atmosphere in which people are induced to graze on salad wraps with non-fat mayo without leaving their screens.
What is to be done? It is vital that we all name the problem and outface those who suggest that only wimps talk about work-life balance. We must make swinking unfashionable just as smoking and other addictions are increasingly in the dock and under the judgement of public opinion.
We must find small incremental ways of changing the atmosphere at work. We must insist, particularly to ourselves, on having a proper lunch break preferably in congenial company.
In order to divert the pressure of the passing moment we might try beginning the day with a half hour's meditation and treating this time as seriously as we would any other business engagement in the diary. The newly opened London Centre for Spirituality www.spiritualitycentre.org close to the Bank Underground Station is a place for exploring what pattern of meditation might suit each individual. Once established as a daily habit it is possible to take five minute breaks throughout the day at convenient times to re-establish a healthy equilibrium. How the message would reverberate around the business world if the receptionist asked us to ring back in a couple of minutes because the CEO was meditating.
We are engaged in a life and death struggle. It is no good putting off the day when we give ourselves time to do justice to love as well as work. If there is no struggle today then when tomorrow comes the inner life will be too impoverished to bear much fruit. Swinkers of the world unite! Today is when urgent inaction is needed.
