Business or Pleasure? Boy or Girl?

Someone emailed to me, “I’m sorry to see you had to work on Saturday night.” I don’t understand why because the “work” was only a couple of emails that I sent. And I was happy to do that on a Saturday night, just like I was perfectly happy to spend the entire Tuesday morning shopping for a mountain bike.

Someone asked me, “Are you having a day off?” when I had simply enjoyed a stroll in a park and a caffè latte in a coffee bar. This puzzled me because nobody ever asks me if I’m having “a day on” when I skip my daily walk and my moment of relaxation with a book in a bar.

Someone asked me, “Is it for vacation or for work?” when he heard that I will be traveling to the United States in August. It made me wonder why people expect my trips to be either work or leisure, and never both. Truth is, I’m moving my whole life to the US, for a period of two weeks, including my significant other.

Why are people so conditioned to categorize everything?

Why do they need separate boxes for “working” versus “free”? “Business” versus “pleasure”? “Days on” versus “days off”?

Extremes are illusions. Nothing is black or white. Much more interesting is the fuzzy stuff in the middle.

I’ve promised myself, next time someone tells me they have a new baby, I will not ask them, “Is it a boy or a girl?” Instead, I will ask, “Is it happy?”

image: (c) 2007 Eric Fleming, Creative Commons 2.0