Lebenskünstler

When it happens that a worklike approach to life becomes one’s only approach, this special difficulty is termed work-fixation. Work-fixation turns every experience into work – even playing, dancing, or relaxing.

Work-fixation is not the same as spending long hours at an office. Nor is it necessarily avoided by spending much time pursuing leisure-time activities. Rather, work-fixation has to do with a way of living, of approaching life, and of being present to whatever we are involved in. The person who “works” from morning til night may not be at all trapped in a worklike approach to life, just as the person who has a job for a few hours each day may not necessarily avoid work-fixation. The mark of being fixated is being always and everywhere project-oriented.

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What our cultural incentives to work fail to make explicit is a difference between recognizing our value and achieving it by the job we perform.

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When we live fixatedly as workers, we have a way of pushing both the transcendent and earthy sides of ourselves so far to the background of our personalities that we live on the brittle level of isolated practicality.

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…most of our life is in large part a rationalization of our failure to find out who we really are…

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…becoming attentive to how we use words, space, and time. That effort can move us toward the world of responsible involvement, which brings with it the rediscovery of leisure.