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What we can learn from hot worms, or why it's OK to be a "workaholic'.

Article Excerpt
Did you know that there are worms that live in water so hot that it would kill other worms?



This unusual preference for the scalding heat may be because of food, since these worms are the only animals that can get to lush carpets of bacteria flourishing around sizzling deep-sea vents. "We speculate that these worms have evolved to prefer and tolerate these temperatures because it allows them to graze on bacterial lawns that no other organism can access." (1)

What would happen if some of the cooler worms (those in the luke-worm, cool-worm, and berg-worm ponds) decided that, since hot water is fatal to them, it is therefore bad for all worms? Remind you of some of the arguments and declarations we hear about work/life balance?

I suspect there may be entire law firms composed primarily of hot worms. These lawyers thrive on conditions that might prove injurious or even fatal to other lawyers. I am concerned for the hot-worm lawyers and the damage that might be done to them if someone decided that these torrid wigglers needed to swim in cooler waters in order to achieve life balance as defined by some other worm.

In many cases, a cool worm may be an unhappy or dead worm. In a book profiling people who have found their life's work in unusual professions, author Chris Ballard writes, "There's no proper balance for everyone's life, only a proper balance for each...

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