Live to Work or Work to Live?

I can’t remember the context any more, but once, when I was in high school, a boyfriend of mine asked “do you want to live to work, or work to live?”

It’s one of those annoying questions that stoners ask when their existential angst comes up pressure from their parents to get a j-o-b.

My mom was an artist (is still), and she loved her work. She lived to work. It didn’t always pay the bills (or so I know now, with the perspective of grown up hindsight), but her work was her passion. So when stoner-boy posed the question, I answered without hesitation – live to work.

But thinking back, I remember my date scoffing. His mom was a lawyer, or something, and I think he equated living for work with selling your soul.

He planned to work to live – go, clock in, do his time and then go home to the thing he really cared about (pot). Even back then I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around that. I mean really, we spend more time working than we do with our families.

Working to live is what you do when you have to. I’ve certainly done it, but it’s not my preference. Life is too short to waste eight hours a day on things/people you don’t care anything about.

I think I’ve been knocking this question around some lately because I’m realizing that things aren’t as simple as the marijuana-addled brains of a teenager would like to believe. I’ve got a great job, and I get to do a lot of writing for clients, but I don’t LIVE for my work. I live for the writing I do at five in the morning. Well, actually, I LIVE for my family. They are the best and if I could I would lay around with them all day every day, soaking in the kiddie pool and planting strawberries, but there are bills to pay. So I work.

I guess the best we can hope for is to be engaged, to be interested enough in what we’re doing, and/or who we’re doing it with, that the time passes quickly and we can get back to the things/people we love. Would that count as living to work, or working to live?