Living for the Weekend

So I’ve been thinking…

There is something profoundly sad about the comments so many of us make–myself included–like “thank God it’s almost the weekend.”  We discount the value of five of our seven days each week.  We are saying that we don’t appreciate 5/7ths of our lives.  And the truth is, most of us don’t appreciate it.

Why is that?  Is working so hard?  So bad?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t clean sewers for a living.  I’m not the guy in charge of executing the next prisoner on death row.  You’ll never catch me conducting a rectal exam.  No, I work in a really nice office.  My office mates are people that I would choose to have as friends.  Sometimes I get to do really meaningful work, like telling the story of an amazingly generous 14-year-old or empowering people to get involved in overthrowing some really bad piece of legislation.  I’ve gotten to meet some amazing people including the founder of Habitat for Humanity Millard Fuller.  I’ve ghost written pieces for the nation’s top newspapers.  I have a window office.

So why do I–and so many others–act as though we are just trudging through the week to arrive at two magical days called Saturday and Sunday?  Maybe it is because we resent that we HAVE to be at work each day.  If work was optional, maybe we’d be excited to come into the office.

Or perhaps we all just secretly resent that life didn’t turn out the way we had planned.  I know that I planned to be an academy award-winning actress who also happened to be President of the United States.  And Pope.  And a mom.  And independently wealthy.  So maybe the truth is that I can’t fully appreciate what I actually do for a living because it isn’t what I always wanted to do for a living.

My mother likes to say that the secret to happiness is to have an attitude of gratitude.  Don’t you hate it when your mother is right?