Survival is insufficient. This is a line of dialogue from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. It’s a rather profound statement when you stop to think about it. There’s a saying I vaguely recall that relates to it, something about working to live or living to work. Today, in the United States, it seems more like people are living to work than working to live in my opinion. We struggle to pay the bills and get by, and at the end of the day we have no energy left to enjoy whatever little time is left before it starts all over again the next day. And while that is a decent example it’s probably not the most extreme.
I once told my mother, if I ever become so sick or injured that I can only survive with life support, to please pull the plug and just let me die. To me that wouldn’t be living, it would be surviving. Again I think of “survival is insufficient.” I believe that the quality of our lives must exceed a certain threshold so that we are “living” and not just “surviving.” From an outsider’s point of view my own life might not seem like it has a high quality but when I take a step back and look at the bigger picture, I can’t say I am just surviving. For all the quirks my own personal situation has, I can honestly still say I am living. Sadly not everyone can say that for themselves.
When our days are consumed by work, with no time to enjoy the fruits of that labor, and/or said fruits are barely enough to keep the lights on and food in the house, it really comes down to that whole working to live vs. living to work thing. I wish our society could advance faster to a higher standard of living for everyone. Not just the wealthy or the lucky or the sneaky.
One day I’d like to see our world really beyond where it is now, a society where people can do jobs they love and not just whatever pays enough, a society where everyone has shelter, clothes, food and most importantly time to enjoy it all.
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