More Work Than Life

I have spent the last week abroad visiting a friend who has had a serious, life-threatening, and life-changing medical crisis.

Almost overnight, his ability to speak, move, live independently, and take care of himself changed completely. The road ahead, if he is able to come through this, will be long.

It has been a difficult week in many ways.

For the past four months, I had been working at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Very little pause. Very little attention to anything outside the work.

There was a simple reason for this: there was a lot of work to be done.

But of course, there is always a lot of work to be done.

Many years ago, I was talking with a construction worker in Mexico while he was doing some work at a house. We were talking about life, work, money, responsibility, and the pressure that never really ends.

At one point he turned to me and said:

"Hay más trabajo que vida."

There is more work than life.

The phrase stayed with me.

This week, it came back.

I walked everywhere. Something I almost never do in Phnom Penh anymore. Yesterday alone, I walked more than 20,000 steps.

I noticed how much of normal life I had allowed to narrow.

I had stopped going to the gym eight months ago after an injury. Then slowly, without one clear decision, other things were suspended too.

Movement. Friendship. Rest. Unstructured time.

The ordinary acts that keep a person in contact with one's own life.

None of these things seemed urgent while the work was urgent.

But sooner or later, the neglected parts of life return as consequences.

The same work we over-attend to eventually suffers from the life we under-attend to.

There is more work than life.

Which is exactly why life cannot be postponed until the work is done.