Why Stevie wonder didn’t record Songs in the key of Work
If you think that your life only happens outside of work and everything within work has nothing to do with Life.. well that’s F@#*ed.
When Stevie Wonder wrote and recorded Songs in the Key of Life at the Crystal sound studios in Hollywood, as he sat in his studio he wasn’t tempted to substitute the word life for work because he had clocked into work to record the album. To him recording that album was life too. It’s all life. Can’t imagine Stevie clocked in each day either. “Songs in the key of work” anyone, nah me neither
“Songs in the key of work” anyone, nah me neither
Yet we separate life and work constantly because Life is seen as the good stuff and work represents the drudge and banality of our existence so we can merely have more of the good stuff(Life). We are guilty of separating the two as if neither had any connection to the other. You don’t hand over the keys to life experiences at the door of your workplace when you enter each day and pick them up again as you leave. While sitting at your desk, driving your truck or designing a skyscraper you are wrapped up in all the emotions and reality of your life,neither are separate. If you can cry or laugh while you are work …that is living.
The words we associate with both words also define how we think of them. Work hard, sacrifice, workplace stress, work rate, overwork. There is even a word for death by overwork in Japanese called “Karoshi” and in China its called “Guolaosi”
Life is affirming, beautiful and wonderful and very much connected with the now.
Yet we use language that connects work to experiences that we would rather avoid.
Work hard- Play hard.. what bullshit. Who thought of connecting the word play with hard. How many schools and nurseries are littered with instructions for younger versions of us to play hard when break time comes around. If play was hard it’s unlikely any four-year old would ever bother with it.
“I do not particularly like the word ‘work.’ Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Play is fun and as outlined in the Sawyer effect when work becomes play the magic happens. It is when we separate Life and work and play becomes work that our motivators in life are lost and this is when we are most likely to want to treat work as an external to our lives
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
― Alan W. Watts
On a daily basis we get asked “How is work?” but we rarely if never get asked “How is Life? as if one is easier to answer than the other. Yet both are one. If your life experiences while at work are effecting your relationships and health. Then you may be in the wrong job or with the wrong company. The more you separate the two the greater the resentment for the one you like least appears. The solutions to this will come in another post but the truth is that…..
