Work Life (im)Balance: Why the Egg McMuffin is evil

It’s 7 AM and I’m asleep in a car thats driving me back to my apartment. I wake up when I feel the car stop and look out expecting to be home, but instead find myself in a McDonalds drive-thru. My brother in law has been awake all night, as usual, and has to be back at work at 8 am to put in another all nighter. There’s no time to eat breakfast, so he’s forced to stop and order a fresh egg mcmuffin (hold the ham) before he treks back to work. I start to wonder why anyone would want an egg mcmuffin when they can eat a good breakfast at their own home?

I soon realized that no one ever wants an egg mcmuffin. Let’s start at the beginning. Why does a Man need a Job? In order to live and provide a comfortable lifestyle. If the entire purpose of having a job is to be able to afford this lifestyle, wouldn’t it render your job pointless if you are not able to partake in it? You have this job that allows you to buy eggs, bread, milk, and juice to fill your house, but you dont have time to eat or drink in your house.

The corporate world likes to deceive you with the phrase “healthy work/life balance”, when in actuality work and life are synonmous to them. They created a “work from home” genre that is worse than going into the office, because your job never stops.  The laptop is perpetually hinged to your side in case an alert pops up. There are endless facets that add to this improper balance (i’d name the Blackberry, but I’m pretty obsessed with mine, so we’ll leave that out).

The question is, when can we stop eating egg mcmuffins?  The answer is, never. A job is no longer about living a comfortable lifestyle, it is about ambition, exellence, perfecting your craft and rising to the top. No one is fulfilled until they attain that goal. The real question is, what do we sacrifice if we keep eating egg mcmufins? The answer is, a lot. We sacrifice enjoying the things we’ve worked for and the time that could be spent doing things we love. The worst part is, we are run by a clock that ticks our life into a routine where we move without stopping to understand why we are here and , as cliche as it sounds, to smell the roses.

The only hope is that when the clock stops ticking, we will be happy with how we lived our lives. If not, well, at least the egg mcmuffin was tasty.