Read and discuss the following text. Explain the words in bold

Stress, sleeplessness, depression, heart disease, shortness of temper, memory loss, anxiety, marital breakdown, child delinquency, the decline of local neighbourhoods, rudeness, suicide, - a mere short list of some of the symptoms of the postmodern malaise. The cause of all our woes? Enter stage right, the prime suspect - work. Wicked, wicked work. An avalanche of surveys, polls and expert commentaries show that we all work too long, too hard; that our bosses are beastly; that we are insecure and afraid. You know all this stuff. We seem to be workers on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So far, so bad. But there's plenty of good news about work, too - even if it is not always shared with the same enthusiasm as the 'Work is Terrible' stories. Four out of ten UK workers declare themselves 'very satisfied' with their jobs, more than in France, Germany, Italy or Spain.

Work has become our national obsession. Whether we are damning the impact of work on our health, our families, our time, or celebrating its new-found flexibility, rewards and opportunities, we are talking, writing and thinking about work like never before. As with so many obsessive relationships, the one with work is a love-hate one. Confusion reigns. Mixed messages are everywhere - on the one hand, the government bangs on and on about the importance of paid work, and then cautions about the impact of too much paid work on families. Women celebrate the economic independence work brings, then are made to feel guilty about their children. Salaries go up, but few of us feel richer. We get to a point where we feel OK about our work; and then along comes Martha Lane Fox and we think we've missed the dotcom boat. We find a job we love and so work long hours at it, and then feel that we are failing to get our 'work/life' balance right.

Why is work under the microscope? Why all the angst? Perhaps because our work simply occupies a more important place in our lives than it did. Maybe we care, and worry, more about work for the same reason we care and worry so much about our children or our health - because it is important to us. Men and (for the first time in centuries) women are placing work closer to the centre of their lives. And maybe that's no bad thing. The 'leisure society' - remember that? -would probably have been a boring place in any case.

Our work fixation springs from a series of profound changes in the nature of employment, all of which push work more deeply into our individual lives, our families and our communities. Work has become a more important element of our personal identity; we have greater control and choice over the shape of our working lives: women have entered and transformed the workplace; the nine-to-five has become more sociable; more of us want or need the financial independence that a wage offers; and the economic rewards of working have increased - work pays,

Work has become a more important personal identity tag, supplanting the three traditional indicators of our uniqueness - place, faith and blood. As geographical roots have weakened, religious affiliations have diminished and the extended family has dispersed, how we spend our labouring hours has become a more important window into our souls. This trend reflects and reinforces a desire for work which brings personal fulfilment, for work we are proud of. If work means not just income but identity, then the choice of job becomes critical. This is why tobacco companies find it so hard to hire people - to work for them would be to taint your own identity.

But the new salience of work has come with a price fewer people are able to feel secure; the need to keep pace with change is tiring and stressful; white-collar workers are putting longer hours to try and keep a toehold — with potentially damaging consequences for the children: and the deification of work threatens to push those who are outside the paid workforce further towards the margins of society. This would not matter so much if work did not matter so much.

Not just in terms of income, but in terms of identity. When work becomes more than simply a passport to a pay cheque, when it opens the door to friends, purpose, satisfaction and a place in the world, its absence is more keenly felt. Once we admit the centrality of work to our lives, it might be harder to kid ourselves that we are doing older employees a favour by 'letting them go".

But we dare not admit work's importance to us. We like to moan about it, preferably with work colleagues just after work. One publisher says: "I love my job, but I feel embarrassed even saying that. My parents think it is sad that the only friends I've got are through work - but I don't see the problem, Funnily enough, we've got lots in common!" The love of your job is now the only one that dare not speak its name. The idea of work as intrinsically bad has poisoned us for too long. The poet and mystic Kahlil Gibran said that work was "love made visible". Wouldn't it be great if we could capture a bit of that spirit, even if just for a while?

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29