Greta Thunberg is taking adults in our culture to task. “How dare you!” echoes around the world. We know the status quo isn’t working, and it is terrifying our children. The planet is doing its best to regulate the carbon and water cycles we have disrupted, but we are creating damage faster than it can keep up.
The status quo, the source of Greta’s rage, is the sum of our daily activities on planet Earth, much of which is related to the work we do to make a living. If we drill down a bit farther, we see work is ostensibly what we do to meet our collective needs and our wants. Taking a broad view again, we can see that today’s economic systems have evolved to distribute goods and services, i.e., meet our needs and wants, with such sophistication that algorithms can predict what we want.
Our sophisticated economy can even manufactures desire for what we want. Here’s the rub: this want, both organic and manufactured, comes with a price. The price is the potential for systems overwhelm. It is happening at the individual level just like it is happening at the planetary level.
There are a number of reasons for this overwhelm. (A quick aside: this piece is not is not aimed at folks who are battling systemic issues such as poverty, racism, ableism!). One of the reasons is that we get so caught up in chasing a career to get what we want that our mind, body, and spirits suffer.
At a certain point, our system can’t take it anymore. Once we decide enough is enough, we switch from chasing a career to crafting a livelihood.
Crafting a livelihood is deliberately choosing work that fits within our values and limits. This doesn’t mean the end of bad days, constant fulfillment, or never getting sick. It doesn’t mean being complacent. We can still push that edges of what is possible, but we do it without over-stressing our system.
The steps we take as a collective to live within our values will have a positive effect on our environment. At the very least, we will find ourselves with more time to help restore water and carbon cycles in our communities and to support political candidates who support your values.
If you fancy getting some support to craft your own livelihood, please drop me a line at kay@kaysterner.com.