To work is to breath

Back in March I was searching for some airline deals when all the suddenly I found a cheap ticket to Tokyo. My brain was steaming, you can never find such a low price from Italy to Japan, the cheapest regular ticket has an average price of 750 Euro. The deal was with Alitalia with quite an interesting formula where you had to book the ticket before March 9th, but you could have moved your departure up until the end of June.

I was ready to take-off right away without any doubt, I would have reached for my suitcase and quickly stuffed the essential. Going to Japan isn't something that you can do every day, so I thought that it must be an awesome experience that you gotta share with one of your friends at least.

I made sure that I had a week to stay away from work, then I immediately called my buddy Nikky and he was quite surprised of my proposal to head east of the planet. He immediately said ok, but the only thing he had problems with were taking days off work, which he unfortunately couldn't take. I knew there that the Japanese option was fading because my best friend was bounded and didn't have days to spare. 

I proposed Japan to Andrea and he was half estranged and half shocked by my proposal. He asked me why Japan, and I replied that it was an opportunity to see a totally different civilization, culture, language, faces; an opportunity to see in person what's happening on the other side of Earth. Him too couldn't join me in my 'expedition' to Asia, taking days from work isn't easy anymore, and you are propelled to skip so many opportunities because in the back of your mind you keep thinking about your work, your tasks, your appointments, your comoing salary and why you can't climb the ladder.

I find mankind continuosly bounded by work and by whatever orbits around. We spend so much of our life working to buy food, pay our infinite bills and what remains in our hands it little or nothing; we work to barely arrive at the end of each month asking ourself why working so much is the only oxygen we can breath?!

How many times have you heard "Sorry, I can't I gotta work!" or "I can't take any leave from work..."? We don't even have to think when someone is asking us to take one or two days from the job, we will automatically answer that we can't because our bound to it is stronger than us.

Does work give you freedom? Is it the only source of wealth? Why do we have to work to produce more than we can spend or consume?