Making A Living vs. Actually Living

It has been normalised in our society choose to make a living over, well, actually living.

We’re forced to make choices daily that keep us in monetary or societal entrapment. Where we have to put earning and our livelihood in front of taking care of important aspects of our lives such as our health, relationships, creativity or the environment.

We observe and absorb messages of being a consumer over being a world citizen. All.the.time.
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We have forgotten money has only been around hundreds of years, but people have been here thousands.

Its only recent then that we have to purchase all our survival items, such as land to live, food to eat. Before it was a result hard work and nature. If you worked alone, you’re chances of survival greatly decreased. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So how do we now find the middle ground? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Between life and work?
Self-sufficiency and communal care?
Wants and needs?
Consumer and citizen?
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Such has dismantling multi-generational homes and imposing hefty health and educational expenses.
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As we’ve moved all members of the household outside the home to work, children to be cared for by others, being reliant on our survival needs from others or big companies, ignoring our relational and creative needs we are seeing epidemics of lifestyle diseases, loneliness, depression and climate crisis. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So whats the antidote?

One aspect is to stop choosing our livelihood over life.

As in, we stop working in a way that our health declines, filling creative holes with consumer goods, patching relationships together in time in-between work hours or negating them all together. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In this environment how can we hear ourselves to understand the full spectrum of our desires and abilities.
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By changing how we relate to earning our livelihood is one starting point to changing ourselves and society. It’s bringing the human-ness back, because when we no longer just BE and instead always DO, we stop feeling.