The better life
Has anyone noticed lately that we hear more and more of concepts that try to define the "Better/balanced life"?
I'm talking about Ikigai, or Lagom, or even Oola.
We hear about them in commercials, read them in articles, watch them in talks, and see them beautifully illustrated by Iulian Olariu.
After recently listening to Esther Perel, talking about modern love vs. the old concept of love/marriage, it started to make sense to me. I'll try to resume it briefly.
Back in the days, Esther says that people married pragmatically, they had children in order to have help around the house, as a resource. It had nothing to do with romantic love. You had that outside the marriage, as an affair. Your actions and decisions were all a matter of survival.
Now, the times have changed. We no longer look for Intimacy as a definition of relationships (we had that a couple of decades ago), we look for INTOmeSEE (nice word-play, right?). We look for our partner to be a lover, and a friend, and a partner in all our plans. We want it all in the same place. Because it's not a matter of survival now. We can express our needs, and we expect them to be fulfilled.
Looking into the business area now, I feel it is very much the same thing. We look for our job to be meaningful, to give us the money we need, to be a place of learning and growing, to make us part of a team, and where our voice is heard. We look for all in the same place.
As for the millennials, and why we study them and see them so differently from us: (The X, Z generation...which one are we? I forgot :) they express their needs. They understand they can have it all. Even if that means unemployment for a while.
The world I live in is divided among people in poverty, corporate people, rich ones and wonderful entrepreneurs and freelancers. And of course, it's all of the state employees.
Some of us are trying to survive, no matter how much money we have. But some of us are coming to life, in understanding that we are more. And we need more. And we are making it happen. Because in the end, it's a mental state ( read more about the family Esther Perel to see what I mean).
And this is what I call... ALIVENESS (I made it up just now:)
What do you think?