At the age of 6 we venture off into a new world of education! We are very excited to be going to school, to meet to friends and to learn how to read and write. It all seems so extraordinary to us! However, unbeknownst to us, the best time of our life, has come and gone. By the age of 7 it is all a distant memory. We attend school Monday through Friday from 8:45am to 2:30pm (of course the time frame varies from place to place and from school to school). We come home from school and we enjoy a precious hour or two playing outside or watching TV. Then suddenly, that precious time is gone, completely destroyed by our parents calling us to the table for dinner. Dinner is quickly followed by our nightly homework session. Shortly thereafter...bed time, only to wake up the following day and repeat the exact same process.
We continue on this monotonous path that we have been given for a minimum of 12 years. However, the majority of us will continue on for a minimum of 4 more years to achieve a post-secondary education. So, we are we now? A minimum of 16 years of education. YES, education IS important, but, the reason it is SO important to add those extra 4+ years is because of what WE have made our society to be. If one wants to make enough money to support themselves and their families, with little to no extras, we MUST obtain an undergraduate degree or some form of college diploma. This truly sickens me. In order to be considered a worthy member of society, we must endure 16+ years of education. One would think that giving 16 or more years of your life would be considered generous and that we could spend our remaining years enjoying life! But NO! We must then enter the work force. The work force is something that no one really considers to be a bad thing. It is a "norm". Yet, this "norm" is something that WE created.
Each human being has a set number of years on this Earth before we curl up and die, either a painful or comfortable death. Either way, death is always knocking on our door, its only a matter of time before we answer that knock. Our parents generation is all about working. They grew up knowing nothing bu work. "If you want to have bread this week, you have to work 60 hours, and I am fine with that." That is their mind set. They have ZERO value for free time, something folks my age cherish. To our parents, we are INSANE for not wanting to work 40+ hours a week. Why would we? Think about it! After those long 16 years of school 5 days a week, we dive into the work force only to work 5-6 days of the week, 8.5 hours each day. Where is the free time we cherish so dearly? It's gone! Why should we spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to obtain an education that we REQUIRE to get a good paying job in society? Read that sentence a few times, mull it over, then answer it! The answer is clear. We shouldn't have to. When the words in that question actually hit home, you will see how insane it really is. We are paying, out of our pockets, so we can make enough money to survive. How does that make ANY sense?
Sure, I am unemployed right now, and I honestly hate that about myself. However, the time I spend sitting at home leads me to begin thinking about the way we live our lives. Right now, if I want to watch TV, I watch TV. If I want to go for a swim, I go for a swim. I do not have to hope and pray that I can get off work early enough to be able to the things I want to do. Often times people wonder why college students party and go out so often. The reason is simple. After our university careers are over, we are left with nothing. We are left with a job that is likely shift work, that pays JUST enough to pay our way in this world. We quickly come to realize that time spent with friends and family diminishes because we all work different jobs, with different hours, making it near impossible to make time for each other.
I am sure that each and every person reading this knows of a few individuals who work really hard to have luxuries that the majority of us cannot afford, such as boats, cottages, and RV's. But, think about how much time they have to enjoy the things they worked so hard for! I know many people who have purchased various luxuries and have seen those luxuries do nothing but gather dust. Why? Because in order to have them, we must spend the majority of our time working. What is the point of working our asses of just to have no time to enjoy the fruits of our labor?
We work, work, and work some more until the age of 65 or older. At which point we will be too old to truly enjoy these things. Sure, we will be able to enjoy certain things, we will enjoy doing things that most elderly people enjoy doing. However, throughout our entire lives we would have gone through various phases where different things were important to us, but we never got to thoroughly enjoy doing them because we were too busy punching the clock.
The ironic thing about our society today is that it is our own fault. There was a time when every individual and every family built their own houses, grew their own food, and slaughtered their own meat. But then, somewhere down the line, some idiot thought "Hmmm, I could just borrow money to buy a house that's already built, this will save me time and let me do more enjoyable things." Wow, talk about a bad call. I am betting that person had new idea that they would spend the rest of their lives working hundreds of hours a month just to pay off that house (which was supposed to give them more free time)! It is somewhat comical. Do me a favor. Go to a busy part of town and just sit and watch society. Always rushing to make that meeting or that doctors appointment. We have made it so there are not enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do. Where do you think Day Light Savings time came from? We had to create it so we could have more day light hours so we could work MORE! We CHANGED TIME so we could WORK MORE. How absurd is that?
So, in conclusion, take a look at your life. Take some time to realize that from the day you are born, you are expected to get yourself educated, work your ass off, only to die a few short years later. Allow me to quickly put this into perspective a little better. The average Canadian female will live to be 75 years of age. 75 years equals 27,375 days. Seems like a lot right? Well, lets look at how many days we spend doing things like school and work...assuming the average person works and/or attends school for 60 of those years. Working 5 days a week for 60 years equals, 15,600 days. Leaving us with a mere 11,775 days for other things such as childhood, retirement, and raising our families. Doesn't seem right does it?
I truly believe that when our parents generation begin to retire and we begin to take over, we will notice a difference in the way the world works. My generation VALUE our free time, we cherish our hobbies and time with friends. Work is not number one on our list. You will see employers hiring more employees but each employee will likely be working an average of 4 days a week and likely shorter hours as well. This is because we realize that as of this moment, our lives are nothing more than working to our grave, literally! (Burying ourselves costs a pretty penny, we must ensure we have good life insurance so we can be properly buried). Imagine that, we are LITERALLY working to to our grave. Kind of depressing isn't it?
-Drea
