LABOUR DAY: Have We Forgotten How to Live Outside of Work? In an age of modern convenience and 24-hour accessibility, we seem busier than ever, and life seems to be speeding up. It makes me wonder whether Samuel Parnell's stand for work-life balance has been lost in our modern world.
Samuel Parnell was a carpenter who, back in 1840, refused to work more than eight hours a day, believing there was more to life than just working. Yet it took nearly 60 years for New Zealand to officially establish Labour Day, recognising the long struggle for fair working hours and conditions.
Parnell's philosophy of eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation and eight hours for rest made sense. Although the laws around working conditions have improved in New Zealand, I'm not so sure our attitudes towards work-life balance have.
The conveniences of modern life haven't necessarily created more time for recreation. Instead, they've catapulted us into an era where we've become addicted to distraction and seemingly forgotten how to truly rest, rejuvenate and enjoy life.
Work seems to take priority over enjoyment, as we live with attitudes such as: "When I retire, I'll have time to do all the things I enjoy." That's if we make it to retirement and are still physically able to enjoy them. Or, "I'll do something I enjoy when I've finished everything I have to do first."
While we might hope for a long and healthy retirement, none of us knows how much time we'll have or whether we'll be physically able to enjoy everything we've been putting off. So why wait until retirement to start doing more of the things we love?
We still live in an era of work first, live later. And if you don't particularly enjoy your work, that's an awful lot of your life spent doing something you don't actually want to do.
With convenience at our fingertips, we seem to have less time than ever. Nothing really stops these days. Most shops are required to close for just three and a half days of the year. But not on Labour Day! How ironic is that?
Long weekends often mean longer working hours for those in retail, hospitality and tourism, while farming and medical services, of course, never stop.
Convenience and accessibility don't necessarily create more time. They seem to steal it.
We have machines that wash and dry our clothes, vacuum our houses and mow our lawns. We have grocery deliveries, convenience meals and now AI making everyday tasks quicker. Yet instead of relaxing with the time we've saved, we simply use it to do even more — like washing more clothes!
The irony is real. We run more errands, take on more commitments and squeeze in more children's activities. Then we find ourselves relying even more on convenience just to get through each day, often at the expense of rest, nutritious food and quality social connection.
It's rush, rush, rush.
No wonder so many of us feel burnt out.
What if we brought back no trading on Sundays? (I know, the economy might collapse!)
For all the hardship lockdowns brought, do you remember how some of us relished the slower pace of life? People walked around their neighbourhoods, pottered in their gardens and even spoke to their neighbours! There was something rather lovely about that simplicity.
Yet life seems to have sped up even more in the years since. We're constantly distracted. Emails to check and respond to, life admin to sort out, banking, buying and selling available 24/7. And instead of leaving work at work, we increasingly bring it home with us.
With some childcare centres now open from 6.30am until 6pm, it's perhaps another reflection of how much our working lives dictate the rhythms of family life. Yes, extended hours provide much-needed flexibility for some families, but with greater availability, we're also creating expectations of constant availability.
So when do we actually switch off? When do we say no and stop?
We've become so accustomed to distraction, accessibility and convenience that we barely notice what we're sacrificing in the process: our time and wellbeing.
As they say, you can make more money, but you can't get time back. And without our health, what do we really have?
Rest, connection and recreation aren't luxuries. They're essential to our wellbeing. Not simply so we can recover enough to get back to work and be more productive, but so that work can support and fund the things we truly love doing.
Samuel Parnell made the first move, putting boundaries around working hours and conditions. Now it's up to our generation to put boundaries around how we spend our 'free' time and show the next generation that life is for living, not just for responding to the next notification on our phones.
So, what is it that truly lights you up? What gives you that sense of satisfaction, fulfilment, achievement, peace or connection?
Maybe Labour Day shouldn't just be about honouring the fight for fair working conditions, but also about honouring the time we have outside of work and how we choose to spend it.
We're not just here to live to work, but to work so that we can truly live.