Work to Live or Live to Work?

Do we live to work or work to live?
That was a question that I remember hearing on a TV ad when I was younger. Back then, I didn't hesitate in saying the latter, but nowadays I can see the other argument. Especially with the cost of living constantly going up and out of reach for most people. A future free of debt just isn't a logical dream for the large majority of people anymore.

Think about it. We grow up with the false idea that our parents have all of the money in the world. The concept of money means absolutely nothing to children but they soon learn. As these once naive kids reach their mid-teens they are pretty much required to get a job. Their wants far exceed the limits of their parents' wallets now and the only way they are going to get anything is to pay for it themselves. Thus, they are thrown into the working world and quickly learn that they can no longer be frivolous with their money.

Part-time jobs make up the majority of the next 6-8 years depending on the type of degree they study at Uni, if any. And by this time the adolescent will have outgrown the family home and ventured on into the flat world of surviving on barely nothing because of the demands of work, uni and a social life. It is a given that quite a few students do get a bit hasty when it comes to spending their money but the general mentality is that 'you only live once'.

By this point in ones life, there is no real foreseeable end to the working life, unless a major win in lotto is involved. There doesn't seem to be another alternative to working. There's the unemployment benefit, but this has its restrictions and is not all that appealing to most people who want more for themselves. It appears that working is embedded somewhere deep in the psyche of human beings. Heck, all animals work! And they don't have the alternative of the alternative of the benefit. For them it's work, or die.

Any way we look at it, working is inevitable. Working is what got us here to the 21st century, why should that basis stop being relevant now. True, working comes with the benefit of money which in turn allows us to buy pretty and fulfilling items, but without it, we would not have the opportunity to buy these things anyway.

It's an endless cycle really. Both sides of the argument are justified all the same. To tell the truth, I think the ad I remember watching was one of those 'new-age' ones where they wanted to get people thinking about their life, but I can't remember what it was about exactly.

It's hard to ignore that little thought in the back of our head that makes us think, 'well maybe we are just working machines, with money used as an incentive. I prefer to think that we work to live though. It seems more logical when one initially thinks about it.