Work and Love, Ying and Yang

Sigmund Freud once said "Love and work... work and love, that's all there is." So I can't help it thinking that if you haven't got any of those two, you're fucked. That's all there is in this world: love and work. As much as I want to disagree with Freud, I think he has a point. London life seems to be like this. 9-5: work. 5-late: love. Love doesn't necessarily have to mean "relationship love". In fact, there are five words for love in Greek with different meanings. Eros - passionate love, Philia - friendship, Agape - unconditional love, Storge - affection, and Thelema - desire. Now that i expanded the word "love," Freud seems to be making a lot more sense you know. I go to lectures everyday (some people go to work) and consider that as my work. After that I hang out with my friends and that's my Philia time. But what happens when someone intertwine these two identities?

I suppose it's good if you love your work because then it wouldn't feel like work at all. Your storge for your work transform your "work" from just a mere boring routine to something that you look forward to on doing- something you're very passionate about. My work, which is my course, is starting to become my lover. OK, that sounded a bit weird and creepy. What I meant was I'm starting to love my course. OK, so maybe I'm still falling asleep on my lectures and also missing some lectures, however I'm starting to find certain subjects in my field quite interesting that I start to obsess about it because I'm just so keen. Now you see this is where the problem lies. I think if you let the field of love intertwine with your work too much, I think it becomes unhealthy that you started disregarding the other loves in your life such as eros, agape and philia. So theoretically, it's good to love your work but it's not good if the field of "love" overtakes the field of "work." But what happens when love seems like work?

Love should never feel like work. Love should be spontaneous. If it feels like work, I think you have a big problem there which is worst than loving your work too much. Basically, if you think about it, you only have work in your life with the absence of love as love is work....did you get that? However, there comes the question of if you love someone, shouldn't you work for it? I guess this is partly true but I still think that love is not something you should work for. It's something you cannot control. It just happens. I don't think you could ever work for love as this is like deluding yourself in believing a lie. Alan Watts said "love is not on our command" and working for love is like controlling love isn't it? You're controlling yourself to fall in love with someone. It's a very complicated situation which resulted me into this rambler. I feel like I'm working for love and I know this is wrong. However, I genuinely like this guy and I can see myself falling for him. But there's just too much effort for it.

Work and Love is like ying and yang, it needs to be balanced. If they do overlap, the overlapping area must be balanced as well. Once you get this all balanced, you will have happiness. In my situation, the overlapping just went too much for both work and love. However, the overlap is balanced: my work is my love and my love is my work. Does that mean I'm happy though?

The Murphy Syndrome

Murphy - me, student, lives in London and gay.

Syndrome - a combination of signs and/or symptoms that forms a distinct clinical picture of a particular disorder.

The Murphy Syndrome - 1.My blog. 2. A particular syndrome which includes symptoms of cynicism, bitterness, randomness, sarcasm and the occasional neuroticism. Cause is unknown and intense research is undergoing to find the root of this disease. Treatment includes excessive amount of time doing sports, preoccupying one's self with work(mainly studying) to forget the existence of the disease, a gluttonous meal usually work but with dire side-effects and alcohol, but again with side-effects. A sense of achievement usually cause the patient to go on remission but this is temporary. Research is being done on the treatment of Murphy's syndrome with "relationship." Relationship seems to have caused the patients to go on remission. However, after a short period of time, the patient suffered a milder case of Murphy's syndrome. Lots of time and money has been spent on the field of "relationship" on curing this disease but more time must be spent on the treatment using "work." Scientists have argued that if the patient do more "work" then perhaps an achievement might be gained and will cause the patient happiness and therefore remission from this disease.