Work vs Life

Sometimes I wonder . . . is work easier than life? It can be. Work, at least when we are doing it for someone else like a hospital in my case, has certain parameters. I am expected to do specific things in specific ways in a specific amount of time. Sports is the same way except perhaps more so. The rules are more stringent and the competitors become more skilled, the youngest and poorest dropping out along the way. We marvel at the fine athletes who have perfected the particulars of the expectations of their sport as we will be doing in the Olympics.

But once we leave the workplace or the sports arena, more choices open up to us, how we spend our time and money, what to eat, who to see, what to do. It is all up to us then. There are no outside forces telling us to live our lives in a certain way so it becomes easy to get lax and mediocre. We can postpone a duty that if a boss or coach told us to do, we would do. We have no human referees in our private lives. If athletes fail to play or participate within the rules or are not fit enough, out they go. If we workers do not perform as expected, arriving late and doing our work carelessly, we have the same fate. Life isn't like that. So which is easier?