The Price We Pay

Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

“Perfect goodness, as an absolute state, is not achievable……..” Elise Loehnen

Every day, morning and evening, I am a part of a crowd that uses Qatar Metro to commute from home to work and vice versa. Every day, women and men from all walks of life take the metro.

Puffy, sleepy, and heavy eyes, tired faces, some sleeping until the final stop comes, exhausted, many weary women show up to work every day. The majority spend time on their mobiles or resting until their station arrives or thinking about the future and how things will be. The worrying eyes and serious faces give away everything. It is as if everyone is drowning.

Why, as women, have we come to this stage? Why are we always running? doing and doing and doing? pushing ourselves beyond our reasonable capabilities, overworking, and still stuck in the same web? As mothers, partners, sisters, colleagues, and friends, each one of us is fulfilling the responsibilities and more, and yet, it is still not enough. It is as if there is no way out. Did we, as women, buy into an idea or philosophy for which we are now paying a heavy price?

We did. We, as women, (which includes myself) bought into this idea that we could achieve everything. We can have everything we want. We forgot the basic rule, a fundamental rule of economics: there is always a trade-off. To achieve one thing, we give up the other. The idea of opportunity costs sets the premise for why and how resources should be allocated. We forgot about the opportunity costs, the trade-offs that take many forms and shapes. Achieving everything we want comes at a price; that price being, relationships, rest, sleep, health, and well-being. Today, no matter how hard we work, and how passionate we are, the harsh truth is; that the majority of us are resentful, angry, frustrated, lost and exhausted.

Can We Do It?

From my art class days to the present day, I have never ever felt any connection to this poster by
J. Howard Miller (1918–2004), (artist employed by Westinghouse, poster used by the War Production Co-ordinating Committee).

No doubt at the time, it was to encourage women to join the workforce and that collectively we can achieve everything. Yet, I never liked the masculinity aspect of the poster. Yes, women can do things, women can achieve things but my primary question is: do we have to be a “man” to do them all?

Do we always have to be in our masculine energy to achieve things in life because, being a woman means being weak, soft and meek?

The questions that are asked today are critical because everything around us is unbalanced. We all talk about sleep, but we hardly get it. Why? Because the mind is too active thinking about the tasks of the other day. We all hear about rest but hardly rest as every time we attempt to take a rest, one thing or another comes up requiring our attention. Work hard to climb the career ladder. Well, no matter how hard we work, the harsh reality is one or more factors such as nationality, skin color, or lack of experience (even if you have worked at the same job for quite some years) come in the way of climbing the ladder. So where do we go? Or rather why should we be interested in climbing that ladder?

The scenarios don’t stop here. The real wages have either remained stagnant or declined. The base salary has not budged. Prices continue to soar, whether it be commodity prices or leisure or travel. We are to maintain a certain standard of living with the same wages while prices have soared (no idea how that works). We expect productivity to increase, every time there is a technological breakthrough. In reality, we have become slaves to technology, glued to our screens to ensure all work is up to perfection. Productivity is all about giving your one hundred percent, one hundred percent of the time (even nature does not work this way!). And yet, even that one hundred percent is not a guarantee of a promotion or a step up on the career ladder. As Dambisa Moyo states in her book Edge of Chaos “..money has become the yardstick by which individuals, governments, and societies as a whole are judged”.

At work, women navigate another complex web. Conflicts and politics within a workplace, between colleagues, between departments, and between administration takes a whole new level. A woman must be able to navigate the workplace through emotional intelligence to resolve conflicts, face challenging issues, and find solutions and at the same time, prove her worth and her position through her work and ethics. Still, that is not a guarantee that she will achieve the position she wants until she employs political tools at her hand to get what she wants. As if the work environment was not enough, societal and cultural standards are a whole new level field to play and that takes every bit of emotional, mental, and physical strength as certain standards are to be met. We are continuously judged for our choices of career, clothes, health, education, parenting, personality, and character. It is a never-ending war we are in.

Sadly, despite our best efforts in the midst of all of this chaos, women lose. We lose time that could have been spent with our loved ones, partners, children, and friends, we run around doing every task ourselves, pushing ourselves because we have to prove ourselves, and we lose the time to do things we are passionate about whether it be travel or reading a book or baking. We take a beating on aspects of life that make us human. We are like machines, continuously running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with no stop, until we burn out inviting health catastrophes and resentful emotions.

As I commute, my observations and experiences have taught me one thing: we, as women, are humans deserving of a good content life without the outward pressures of any kind. We do not need to prove ourselves to anyone, not to any woman or man because we walk the distance (or we walk our talk [well at least many of us do]) We do not need to bear the burden of the world on our shoulders when every individual has the responsibility to take care of some part of the burden. We do not need to go over and beyond for anything especially if its price is our health, spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. We do not need to run, especially, when we know what will get in our way even if we are to give our one hundred percent. The world is unfair and not everyone will reach the top. We do not need to be hyper-alert and hyper-active all the time to ensure tasks are done because we don’t bear the sole responsibility of fulfilling the tasks. We do not need to chase because whatever is meant for us will find its way to us sooner or later.

When we refuse to run the rat race, the world stops.

Time stands still to give us the moments that we miss out on, to give us space to reevaluate what we want from our lives, to give us the chance to start dreaming again and listen to our heart and mind desires. It allows us to know ourselves better than anyone else. And then it guides us towards a new journey.

The price we pay to have a good content life is not decided by society nor by any systems.

It is the price we decide, without losing our soul, sanity, and health, on what constitutes a good content life and working towards it at our pace.