A few thoughts about our relationship to the concepts of work and vacation.
Note: Please do NOT take this text as a general criticism of the very individual decision to go on vacation during this phase of the pandemic development. I am only reflecting here on our relationship to the terms work and vacation. Thank you.
I think there would be less need to talk about „giving up vacations” if more people enjoyed their work, if more people could really identify with what they give so much of their lives to.
But that ties right into the next belief: „Everything in life can’t always be fun.” Of course it can’t. But why should it be work, of all things, that we can’t enjoy?
Vacation is considered a redemptive principle for all the „drudgery”. The commandment not to go on vacation in times of pandemic is studiously ignored by some. Corona was and is hard for everyone. People are going crazy, they need a „timeout”.
(„Timeout,” as if you can take yourself out from time. Consequently, there is a „on-time”, the time when you are energized and „functioning”.)
„I will not let this freedom be taken away from me.” „I have earned this vacation.” So you take it. Back home, however, you are first in quarantine. The freedom you take on the one hand is taken away again on the other. 🤷🏼♀️
Posting this as a German citizen, I ask myself: Is there still something of the postwar reconstruction mentality in the linguistic and thus mental hardening the concept of work? Something out of a grievance through defeat that has not been fully overcome?
In the eyes of many, only those who really „toil” and „slave away until they drop” are considered full-fledged workers. Only then does someone enjoy the right to vacation.
The question of whether this work or this vacation is meaningful or efficient is not of secondary or tertiary importance. To ask it alone seems to be a sacrilege. Above all with regard to the concept of work.
Quotation marks galore! But how do you see the topic „to go on vacation”, especially during these times?