There are many things that we can change that are well within our personal control – our lifestyle, our habits, our work and our leisure time, and how we balance them all.
AT the dawning of a new year filled with many dreams and a tremendous hope for both our own personal lives and for our beloved country, we now stand on the threshold of either a brave new world, or on the verge of just repeating what had come before – a never-ending ceaseless cycle of the same old life and livelihood stuck on repeat mode.
The way we live our lives depends on what surrounds us – there are circumstances and environment that we have no control over and can never change, among which are the government of the day (we have just changed that at a recently-concluded general election) and the state of the nation.
There are many things that we can change that are well within our personal control – our lifestyle, our habits, our work and our leisure time, and how we balance them all.
Today’s new generation is discovering that it is not easy to balance work with a well-lived life – in the Western hemisphere, a rather new phenomenon is beginning to take over entire lifestyles and the culture of work/leisure life – they even have a name for it: ‘quiet quitting’.
Last July an American Zaid Khan, a 20-something engineer, had posted a TikTok of himself talking over a montage of the usual urban street scenes – he was looking up at the tree-lined streets while on the subway when he said these words: “I recently learned this term – quiet quitting. You’re not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond – still performing your duties, but you no longer subscribe to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life.
“The reality is it’s not. And your worth as a person is not defined by your labour.”
For as long as I can remember, we’ve always seen a difference in the work ethics and culture between East and West: if this new phenomenon of ‘quiet quitting’ takes root and becomes more widespread, it would definitely widen this East-West ethos even more.
One of life’s big questions that I had actually started asking when I had first started my working life way back in the early 1970s was this – and I had asked it often of my mentors, my peers and others in authority whom I had great respect for.
What’s the biggest difference between us and them; in other words, between someone like me, an Asian, versus someone from, say, England or from America?
Asians, as a rule, tend to work very hard at their chosen careers and workplaces or businesses and have since birth been instilled by their parents of the value of making a good living and if possible, to become better than their forebears.
For most of them, the lines between work and leisure are blurred and at best, they’d try to find overlaps.
I know of people in the past who would rather work more than take their scheduled holiday or annual breaks. They are also proud of ownerships of material goods, properties and are proud to show them off. They’d save and deprive themselves of personal comfort and then buy for themselves the latest model of the best cars they can afford; houses and land as investments; and for this sometimes they’d venture into the stock market, casinos and riskier-than-usual business ventures.
The Westerners, on the other hand, are more concerned about their own personal rights and benefits and their personal space and time, and look upon leisure as a hard-earned benefit that is due to them. They would rather spend their hard-earned money on satisfying their interests, hobbies, on travelling widely, enjoying the best of everything, and seeing as much of the world as they could. Earthly possessions and material goods, although useful, are not priorities.
Experience and having time for themselves are everything. Pursuing their passion, be it to climb the highest mountain, to dive the deepest sea, or to champion a cause – these are more important to them than the latest Rolex watch or the new iPhone.
During the years when I was making a career for myself and raising a family (between the 1970s and 2000s), in my personal opinion, ‘the best of times’ was when we were blessed with peace, a good economy, a reasonably capable government and most of all, a time when we could balance our working hours with quality family bonding time.
I now look at a young man trying to make a decent living nowadays, and what do I see?
If he’s working for himself with a good business or for someone else and doing something that he likes, he’s very fortunate. Most likely his wife would also be working, and if he has a small family of two, he’d have to start his work day very early by sending them to playschool or school; if the wife has her own car, it’d mean extra expenses all around.
It’s very likely that he’d also own a house and might even have an elderly parent or two living with them.
The cost of amenities and the grocery bills would not be low; and together with his phone bills, Internet access, Netflix and a couple of meals out monthly, he wouldn’t have much leftover if he wanted to join a recreation club, or take up golf or tennis.
On weekends, he’d probably take his family for an outing, the movies or someplace upcountry.
He’d hope to go for an overseas holiday regularly too.
In order to afford a reasonably-priced house, he’d have bought one in the suburbs – probably in the new growth areas of Matang Jaya, Tabuan Tranquillity, Kota Samarahan or along the Kuching-Serian new highway. All these areas are now so excessively congested at all hours that it’d probably take him one to two hours to get to his workplace; repeated when he heads homewards.
We have reached an ‘advanced nation’ stage that had afflicted Japan where I had visited during my working time with them in the 1970s/80s.
I had spent time with my Japanese colleagues and asked them at the time what they did for leisure during their weekends off with their families. Their answer (and they all said the same thing) – on weekends back at home, all that they had wanted to do (and could afford to do) was to sleep and rest from the preceding work-week!
I don’t really blame them at all.
They would normally start work by leaving their suburb homes at 5am to take the train into the nearest city to start work at 8am or 9 am, and although the stipulated working hours would finish at 5pm, no one would leave the office till 8pm or even 9pm.
The last train home is at 11pm. By the time they had reached home, it would be midnight; they’d have 4.5 hours sleep every work night, and the routine would start again the very next day. None of them could take their due annual leaves; the entire nation’s workforce would take a week off from Jan 1 every year.
We are rather more fortunate here. At the moment, our economy is good although inflation has hit us hard. We have a good government and there’s peace, the environment appears sufficiently safe, and state security is good.
We are still under the threat of Covid-19, but the fatality and infection rates are minimal.
We are all living in peace and harmony insofar as race, religion and culture are concerned.
Our biggest problems appear to be turbulent, but plans are afoot to lessen them: the frustrating traffic congestions especially along the Kuching/Samarahan Expressway; the slow progress of the Pan Borneo Highway; issues pertaining to low-lying flood-prone areas; while bad and inaccessible country links and the poor public transport continue to bog us down.
Beyond our control are the rocketing retail prices of commodities from local vegetables to pork; the scarcity of eggs from time to time; and of course, the perpetual problem of the long queues at the public polyclinics throughout the state.
Overall, life is good. But as the New Year takes hold, I’d venture a personal word of advice: please try your best to spend more time with your family and your loved ones, and take special care of the elders still with you in your family, whether they’re still with you under the same roof or staying some distance away.
Spare some time for them: make a phone call, visit and better still, take them out for an outing, breakfast, lunch or just a car-ride to the countryside.
Stay in touch: your lives had mattered to them when you were much younger – make theirs matter to you now, before it’s too late.
May I wish you all a very peaceful, happy, prosperous and healthy New Year of 2023.
Keep well, and may God Bless you all.