The Happy Family Organizer
In my long standing corporate career I have been trained in all kind of things, work related and not. One of the socially and politically correct initiatives of my former employer was called Work Life Balance Program. As full time working mom of a 3 years old with health issues, with a full time working husband I qualified immediately (according to any politically correct standard).
The program was of the luxurious sort, cool locations, fancy consultants, polished material.
I would have forgotten everything about it if not for the huge colorful folder which was given to both me and my husband in one of the sessions (yes there were also partner sessions), The Happy Family Organizer.
In spite of all the best intentions I had not even dragged myself to unwrap the folder from its plastic foil, until today. The folder had been standing in our bookcase for the last four and half years.
I do not want to give the wrong impression, the Work Life Balance Program was a very good initiative and a very high qualitative course, I just had not gotten to the Organizer part.
I have been dwelling on the topic of happiness lately so I thought it would be time to give a look at the Organizer, to get some additional prospective.
I quickly browsed through it and next to the usual info about the family, names, birthdays, insurance policy number and so on one thing really stood out. "What is your family objective?" the Organizer was asking me. Oh my God, I had certainly never thought of that. The association was almost immediate, to be happy you need to have a goal. I had to conclude sadly that our family definitely did not have one. To be absolutely sure I asked my husband, "dear" I started walking into the kitchen still in my pajamas "what is our family objective?". "Our family what?" he replies calmly and politely as usual, but the puzzled look on his face said enough. We definitely do not have an objective as a family.
Does this make us unhappy as a family? I am not an expert in happiness but being interested in the topic I will try to give an answer. We are all extremely busy, and we are all victim of a murderous routine, we struggle everyday with many things that we do not like and with a few things that we do like, we spend a limited amount of time with each other and an even smaller amount of quality time. But there is one thing that we do continuously and unconditionally, we love each other. Does this make us happy, I do not know as I have said I am not an expert and I did not read through the whole Organizer.
The program was of the luxurious sort, cool locations, fancy consultants, polished material.
I would have forgotten everything about it if not for the huge colorful folder which was given to both me and my husband in one of the sessions (yes there were also partner sessions), The Happy Family Organizer.
In spite of all the best intentions I had not even dragged myself to unwrap the folder from its plastic foil, until today. The folder had been standing in our bookcase for the last four and half years.
I do not want to give the wrong impression, the Work Life Balance Program was a very good initiative and a very high qualitative course, I just had not gotten to the Organizer part.
I have been dwelling on the topic of happiness lately so I thought it would be time to give a look at the Organizer, to get some additional prospective.
I quickly browsed through it and next to the usual info about the family, names, birthdays, insurance policy number and so on one thing really stood out. "What is your family objective?" the Organizer was asking me. Oh my God, I had certainly never thought of that. The association was almost immediate, to be happy you need to have a goal. I had to conclude sadly that our family definitely did not have one. To be absolutely sure I asked my husband, "dear" I started walking into the kitchen still in my pajamas "what is our family objective?". "Our family what?" he replies calmly and politely as usual, but the puzzled look on his face said enough. We definitely do not have an objective as a family.
Does this make us unhappy as a family? I am not an expert in happiness but being interested in the topic I will try to give an answer. We are all extremely busy, and we are all victim of a murderous routine, we struggle everyday with many things that we do not like and with a few things that we do like, we spend a limited amount of time with each other and an even smaller amount of quality time. But there is one thing that we do continuously and unconditionally, we love each other. Does this make us happy, I do not know as I have said I am not an expert and I did not read through the whole Organizer.
Comments
Post a Comment