I'm Not Working

Things about language hit me sometimes. Working or not working. We use phrases interchangeably and the other day I was struck by the crudeness of how we use language sometimes.

to be 'working' for a human means to be in some kind of employment or engaged in a productive act of some sort - like me writing this thing, for example. For some people 'work' just means a job, for self-employed people it often means their whole existence! Then look at machines. When a machine 'works' it is doing something, i.e. it can be manipulated by humans to do the job we have designed it for. It's working. When it's broken, it's not working. Not working = broken, i.e. not making a contribution, not being productive. So we have machines 'not working' and people 'not working' and I wonder how often we confuse the two in our minds, just out of our own conscious awareness? Not working means broken. I'm talking about the industrial work ethic, considering that if a human isn't 'working' they are not contributing to a system which was designed for humans to work in. For a long time I judged people who weren't in full time employment or busy all the time as lazy or unmotivated and I now see how the 'work ethic' conditioning led me to that conclusion - our societal bias of 'not working = broken', like we are machines, bred to be manipulated into a system designed for us to 'work' in. If we're not 'working' we have no function - yuk! This is what we do to ourselves! Thoughts on this are welcome, please :-)

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Yesterday, I realised that Beth, both my sisters and I are all pretty much in the same line of work - working with people to assist them to be more 'who they are'. I had a "wow" moment because I thought that this is great! So I wanted to share each of their stuff because I know they are all brilliant people doing great things. Beth - coach and changemaker https://www.bethcreedon.co.uk Susan - podcaster and leadership coach https://www.beyond-thenumbers.com/ Siún - ADHD coach https://www.uniquelywiredcoaching.com/

All are 'working' just fine, ha ha! I'm never going to look at 'working' in the same way again, I'm afraid!

Have a lovely day