The word “fatigue” frequently shows up in the headlines. Companies’ productivity suffered because of employee’s long working hours. Sports teams lose because of travel fatigue. Trains derail because of driver fatigue. Ministries go nowhere because of coworker’s fatigue. There was even a report recently about young people suffering from “Wechat fatigue”.
We are a society of tired people in a tired world. Recently, I had a chance to talk to a young graduate just starting his career for one year in a small company. In our conversation, he complained about long working hours and pressure from both customers and boss. He is very tired. I am convinced it is a common phenomenon among today’s young professionals.
The question is how can we balance our life? There is an article published in Harvard Business Review recently. The title is “Work vs Life” and small prints under the title is ” Forget about balance-you have to make choices.” However, the Chinese version translated this article to ” 事业生活双全“，which is completely misleading. I agree there is no way you can satisfy both domains unless you make a choice. If you don’t make choice and try to meet all needs from every part of your work and personal lives, you will soon experience fatigue. It’s just a matter of time. When you start to feel fatigued or unproductive, you have already fallen into the vicious cycle. Regardless of how hard you try to manage your time or discipline yourself, you’d not be able to be out of this mess.
Is there a way out, particularly for us Christians?
These few weeks, in our Saturday fellowship, we are learning the lesson of “solitude”. In the new testimony, Jesus set a great example. He, himself often retreated to the wildness to have a quiet time and place so he had direct communion with God. （John 18：2） Maybe it’s time for us to place ourselves to seek direct communion with Christ. His grace flows to us and we can make the right choice. Other things will naturally start to fall to the right place.
God bless.