Machines of Flesh & Bone0

So after a long and adventurous day of birthday celebrating, renewed friendship, and learning how truly exhausting it is to inject yourself into a full blow ladies night, I find myself to be quite exhausted today.

So during my lunch hour, I decided it would be completely refreshing to enjoy a 30 minute nap. I walk downstairs to the garden patio of my office building that is situated in the heart of Chicago’s financial district, directly across from the Mercantile exchange building on the Chicago river. I was lunch hour so there were a good handful of people dressed similar to me out and about on the gathering area, but I found a nice spot to stretch out on one of our tree planter benches. They’re clearly design for resting seeing ass they are nestled away from the main walkway and filled with fresh seasonal flowers, and big leafy trees.

So I put my feet up, set my phone alarm for 30 minutes, and drift off to the sounds of some Beatles tunes. Before I know I’m even asleep, I find myself trying to figure out what that god awful sound is I’m hearing. I snap to and realize I’m being yelled at to wake up. I open my eyes to a security guard angrily shouting… “Sir… Wake up sir”. I honestly couldn’t even gather myself I was so out of it. I had maybe been asleep for five minutes. I didn’t have a chance to even remember what my name was before I looked up and the security guard was gone.

So I tried to stew over the possibilities as to why it was necessary to wake me up, leaving out the possibility that this security guard thought I was a bum trying to catch a nice nap. First of all, I was sleeping on concrete with a concrete pillow, and second, I’m wearing the corporate costume complete with button down shirt and black leather, polished shoes.

So every other option I could come up with, came back to the same road block in my head. In the modern state of corporate America, we are obsessed to religious levels with productivity. I’m going to assume that the building that houses my employer has a code against people sleeping on their beautiful garden area in front of the building, because the security guard clearly felt that it was the right thing to do to wake me up.

And for the record, aren’t security guards there to protect people? I don’t recall hearing many incidents of people being mugged or harrassed by a sleeping person.

So the building doesn’t want people sleeping… why is that? does it look bad for them to have sleeping employees, or singular employee in my case, strone about your property during the one part of the day that is their time?

Lemme give it to you as straight as I can because the sour taste is still in my mouth. I think this was a small sign of  where we are as a modern society. I think the state of obsession that corporate America has for things like efficiency, productivity, wealth, status and the bottom line, has effected the way things are done more that people realize.

I think we can all admit that the times when we slow down, open our eyes and ears, rest our bodies and absorb the world around us, are the times we remember. The times we just stop, sit and soak. Vacations, long walks with friends, sitting in the woods near a fire, lying on a beach at night and listening to the waves, the bike rides along the lake, the motorcycle rides with friends, and one and on and on… We long for them because they are our escape from the daily demands of the world we’re living in. The traffic, the meetings, the deadlines, the ladder climbing, and these days, it’s still not enough. Now, people do their best and work as hard as they possibly can, and they do it with a new level of furvor because all around us, hard working people who aren’t doing anything wrong, are being kicked out to the curb and told to go learn a new skill so they can get back into the mix, and we accept it. We roll over and we take it.

The world used to be a place where people could do their part to keep society moving, and the natural balance of things provided us with a world where our hard work and human endurance, allowed us to take the other time of our lives and do with it what we pleased. We didn’t obsess over what was going to happen at work or whether or not we were even going to have work. There was no corporate god status like there is now, families could get plenty by by having one working parent, and people defined themselves by who they were, not what they did.

The consequence that worries me the most is I believe very strongly that our current state of things is deteriorating that which makes humans so incredible. Yes, we’re beings of physical labor, but so are other animals on the planet. What separates us from the rest of mother nature is our creative spirt and our ability to do amazing things with the brains we’ve been given. These days, in so many cases, we have become machines of flesh and bone. We clock in turning on the switch, and for the next nine hours, if the boss demands, you do not ask questions you just do, and when we clock out, the switch is turned off. That is of course if you are one of the many people I know who are required to answer their phone at any given time of the day, removing any chance whatsoever of escaping the work world.

Today, I was ike a machine that may have run out of fuel, and I needed a quick breather, but apparently, that is unacceptable. I believe very unwaverinlgy that the human spirit is a gift that we should stop and appreciate every day of our lives.

We are amazing creatures with a most amazing ability to observe, the love, to believe, to communicate and to appreciate. But something’s got to give. Maybe it is finally time to give way to the machines. Let the human ingenuity that has helped us create such amazing things take over and free us all from the restraints that have been placed on us.

Maybe it’s finally time we take the next steps in the evolution of man, maybe we come up with a different blue print of our what we want our society to be. Maybe make a place where productivity and efficiency in the name of success and the bottom line, finally give way to the concepts of community, generosity, ingenuity and exploration all in the name of love?

Who the hell knows? If someone has an answer, I’d love to hear it, but for now, I need to get back to work before my boss gets off the phone with her boss about something that his boss isn’t too happy about (couldn’t make it up if I tried) and catches me being inefficient.