And how are work and Eros actually connected?
Labor Day motivated me to write a manifesto about work.
Work has become suffering, and work is a huge part of our existence. Consequently, life itself has become suffering instead of flow and joy, and it should not be that way.
I ask myself: Can we work and at the same time deeply enjoy that action?
Where did Eros disappear from our everyday work?
When I was a child, I watched the adults around me. They boasted about the amount of work they had done and the size of the sacrifice they had put into it.
Through their example we learned that this is exactly how it should be.
I believe religion also contributed significantly to these values, because it taught us that “the martyrs in this life are the ones who go to heaven in eternal life”.
Without questioning those values, we slowly became part of a system that led us into martyrdom and suffering.
And then, once we had already arrived at that place, we started celebrating it! We are such strange people!
And I have to admit, there was some beauty in it too.
The competitive spirit with ourselves and with others turned into challenges, and challenges into joys and victories.
It was a lively and energized state, but often without real awareness of our own limits.
Eros is distorted in that place, because the pleasure is not in the work itself and in creative action, but in suffering and proving oneself through pain.
(It is interesting to draw a parallel: this is exactly what a submissive person in the BDSM world consciously chooses to give themselves in bed, so that they do not have to manifest the same thing in every other sphere of life.)
Recently I was thinking about all my clients whose children run away from all obligations, responsibility, and work.
I wondered: why have so many children gone to that extreme? Why is there so much resistance toward work in them? Why do they not look forward to creating and working? Do so many people really work only at what they do not love?
Today we see two extremes in two generations.
For Generation X and baby boomers, work became a form of proving their own worth through burnout.
On the other hand, for Millennials and Gen Z after them, work is often something to avoid completely.
Both sides carry their own distortion, and healing is found somewhere in the middle, on the Middle Path.
Here in the Balkans there is an unwritten rule: if work was not difficult and if we did not suffer properly, it is as if that work is not valuable enough.
As if our human worth grows exclusively in proportion to our exhaustion and sacrifice.
Every day I meet women who have been through hell with repairmen, administration, household work, motherhood, and the harsh business world.
One of them recently said a sentence that touched me:
“It is exhausting to be naturally soft, and then suddenly have to manage everyone and be stronger than a crowd of men and women who function in the business world exclusively in harsh, ‘masculine’ energy.”
It was sad for me to witness her pain as she tried to preserve a grain of herself inside that armor.
At the same time, this cult of sacrifice does not spare men either. Recently one male client admitted to me:
“All my life I was taught that my only purpose was to be the provider, the head of the family.”
I learned to switch off my feelings so I could be an efficient ‘machine’, and when I come home to my wife and children, I do not know how to switch myself back on. My Eros stayed buried under a ton of obligations and proving that I can endure.”
Men in our region do not have to be “soft”, but they have to be “iron”.
And iron does not feel.
“Iron” does not make love with joy, he uses sex for regulation.
“Iron” does not play with children, he only supervises them.
Because of this, work has become a burden for all of us. That is why we collectively complain when Monday comes and obsessively count the hours until Friday.
But what is most dangerous in this whole story is our children. They are watching us. They are growing up observing parents who survive instead of live.
They watch parents who have lost their Eros, that life spark, joy, and passion for creation. And worst of all, they learn how to become exactly those kinds of parents to their own children.
That is why some of them choose to escape into the other extreme. Somewhere in their little heads they make a decision:
“Mom and Dad work all the time, and there is no pleasure anywhere in sight. I see that they are dissatisfied and tired, and I do not want that for myself. I will try the opposite. I will just enjoy my video games. Who cares about work!”
I will repeat it a hundred times:
Eros does not live only in our bedrooms. It lives in each of our days, in every task we perform and every responsibility we take on.
We can carry out our obligations with that heavy, leaden energy of the question: “Why me again?”, or we can do them with joy, presence, and living Eros.
How do we bring Eros back into our hands?
You are probably wondering: all right, but how?
How am I supposed to enjoy work when deadlines are pressing me or when the environment is harsh?
The solution is not in changing “what” we do, but “from what place” inside ourselves we do it.
- Let us stop celebrating exhaustion.
The first step is to stop wearing exhaustion as a badge of honor. Eros does not tolerate burnout; it flourishes in a body that allows itself to rest. - Let us bring presence into work.
Eros is sensual, it includes the senses. Feeling the texture of the material we work with, the smell of the air, or our own breath while we create brings us back from martyrdom into being. - Let us set boundaries that protect our softness. Being “soft” requires incredible dragon-like strength for setting boundaries. Let us delegate what kills us and not allow someone else's rigidity to become our destiny.
- Let us work as if our children are watching us. Every time we enter the role of victim, let us remember those little eyes learning from us. Let us show them that work can be an act of creation, not the serving of a sentence.
Healing is on the Middle Path. We are not machines, but we are not helpless victims either. We are creators. The choice is ours, but we must be aware that the consequences of that choice are carried on the backs of the generations that come after us.
And if you need support on the path, I am here.