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The Work/Life Balance Elephants in the Room
Nepo babies and meritocracy rub me the wrong way in similar ways. Both are reasons to dismiss how privileged you are to validate that though it was easier for you, the playing field is fair for everyone else.
It’s not.
But is your effort better spent on leveling the playing field, advancing despite the inequities, or both?
That’s a question only those with the short end of the stick face, which proves my point.
Last week, I asked, Is it too much to want to work and live well?
Instinctively the answer is no, of course not. But, like so many things, it’s easier said than done.
At the onset of the Great Depression, Economist John Maynard Keynes made startlingly optimistic predictions about the economic possibilities his grandchildren might face a century later in a paper called Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.
Within the next 100 years, Keynes proclaimed, technological progress would solve the economic problem facing human beings, individuals would devote themselves to noneconomic pursuits instead, and economic growth and technology would provide enough basic security for a 15-hour workweek.
There was a belief at the time that people should have time outside of work and other life…
