There was a period of my life when I worked in the forest. During those years I was involved in the fighting of forest fires. What I learned about work from those experiences is this… when there are clear orders, or when there is something obvious that needs to be done, it is best to give it 150%. However, if there are no clear orders, or anything obvious that needs to be done, the best thing to do is sit and relax… without distraction. Conserving energy is important in the real world, because we never know what the next moment will bring. During those years, and the years since, I have watched many people burn themselves out because they could not sit still; reflexively occupying themselves with busywork.

The peculiar thing about sitting still is that it takes a certain amount of work to be able to do it. Not just in getting ahead in our chores and duties, but to be able to sit with our own thoughts… in the presence of our own being… without distraction. It takes work. Not physical labor. Or even intellectual labor. It takes Spiritual labor to be able to sit alone with ourselves. (Spiritual labor being the work of getting to know ourselves.) And it takes Emotional labor to sit still in the presence of others. (Emotional labor being the work of building, maintaining, and severing relationships.)

We all know someone who can only relax if no one is around or everyone around them is engage in physical labor or otherwise distracted. This is because that person is avoiding their emotional labor. It is either immaturity, dishonesty, or guilt that prevents them from looking into themselves and finding balance with the people around them. These people can make great, and often complicated efforts, to create endless chores for the people in their lives as an avoidance tactic. They exert a large amount of emotional energy to keep them busy and out of the way. (Emotional energy can be used like a cattle prod. Like an overseer whipping slaves onward.)

The irony of this is that our society measures people who are sitting still as not doing any work. We dismiss people sitting still as being lazy or not motivated. Mostly because the financial benefit of emotional and spiritual labor is mostly to the person who is doing the labor. (Yes! Not spending money on something we do not need just to keep ourselves busy is making money.) There is not an industry in the world that would rather their customers sit and relax (without distraction)rather than spend money. Couple this with the fact that most politicians would rather their constituents be occupied and out of their hair than sitting still and thinking about the world they live in, and we can see why there is so much commercial and social pressure for people to be constantly busy.

In terms of evolution and sustainability, efficiency is king. And from that perspective, it is the environment that dictates what work we should be doing. Our industrial world is producing too much and our political world is desperate to keep people distracted. Both are pushing us further and further from sustainable balance because we, as a whole, are actively avoiding the unseen and unknown aspects of ourselves and our environment.

In the end, I figure the first and most predominant thing wrong with our democracy and capitalist system is that people are not doing enough emotional and spiritual labor.