I want to share with you an article I read the other day What Work Is Really For. With such a high rate of unemployment in Greece (and everywhere else too) we seem to be deeply anxious when we can't find a job and then again deeply anxious when we work (am I going to get fired? or I'm not paid enough etc). We don't have a lot of time to think if work is good or bad, we just want a job. To pay for the essentials, to provide -ourselves or our family-, to live. To have a job used to be everybody's right, now it's become some people's privilege. It's a hard situation we're going through, that's not new. I like what Gary Gutting says in this article:

...in our economic system, most of us inevitably see our work as a means to something else: it makes a living, but it doesn’t make a life.

It's true, isn't it? Do we even live a life of quality anymore? I don't know. Sometimes I think I live as I want, some others all I feel is anxiety, to do all these things I have to / want to. And those times seem to be too many, but then I try to remind myself what's essential to me, to live a "good life" -apart from food, that is.

Socrates believed that the pursuit of material wealth was not the point of living, he always talked about how important virtue was. What do we consider important nowadays? Except money and success, I mean. What are the important qualities a person ought to have? I guess it's personal, but we have to admit, we live in a world totally pointed at material wealth and fake needs. We give a large amount of money to have the new i phone, but we don't have money to buy a book, or go for therapy. Now, I'm just only imposing my own criteria for what one should do, aren't I?

Anyway, I wonder, what do you think is an important quality for a therapist to have? What really makes a good therapist? Do we prepare ourselves as we should or are we in such a rush to earn a living that we skip some steps on the way? And something more. How do you spend your free time? Do you have any?

image by micromeg