Mortgaging the global village
One of life’s great sadnesses is being
separated from the
people we care about. Most of my friends and family are thousands of
miles
away, in Europe, or in Douglas Gloag’s case, Japan.
His visits are always eventful, fun and evocative of our childhood years together, which makes parting a difficult time for me. Monday morning, we all said our goodbyes to Uncle Dudditz! at the airport, for at least another year.
Carolina’s vision of Utopia is a small town – Hudson is the perfect size – where friends and family could live and work together. Close enough to each other without being claustrophobic, or crossing personal barriers. Something like the old village mentality (without the inbreeding).
The world is changing rapidly, but while technology has advanced in leaps and bounds, bringing the possibility of a true global village ever closer, sentiment has failed to keep pace.
The vast majority of workers could fulfil their obligations from a home office. Instead, the workforce of Hudson commutes. That’s priceless energy, both personal and environmental, utterly wasted.
Employers don’t trust their staff enough to let them work from home. Trust is earned, not automatic. You gain trust by being both trusting and trustworthy. If you can’t trust a salesperson or administrator to work unsupervised, why did you hire them? Surely an untrustworthy person should not represent your company, or have access to sensitive information?
Government should incentivise companies to break the status quo of centralised workers, rather than build more roads for us to get bogged down on.
Working from home for a decade has led me to change my thinking about many things, including overuse of the word “need” as a constant excuse for excess.
Quit your day job. You will, within weeks, realise how little you actually need. We’re all so spellbound by the promise of consumer Heaven that we’ve failed to notice it’s more akin to Hell.
The cost is way too high. What price do you place on quality time with your family? Those minutes and hours in the car can never be bought back, no matter how big your salary gets.
In our utopia, Doug would live on Fairhaven and teach Jasper, his cousins and peers, in a local school. Instead, he’s halfway round the world teaching somebody else’s kids. I hope they appreciate him as much as we do. Sleep well.
