Another Day in Paradise?
Phil Collins' Another Day in Paradise isn’t really about paradise, is it? It’s about someone walking past a woman suffering in the street, barely registering her existence, rationalizing her misery away—because, really, what can you do? It’s a catchy tune about the casual, passive cruelty of being comfortably distant from a problem, of knowing something is broken but choosing not to look too closely. Much like the Iraqi labor market in 2025. For most professionals here, “another day in paradise” means another day at a job where the work-life balance is a suggestion at best and a cruel joke at worst. Not so much balance as a slow, methodical erosion of personal time, a steady dissolving of evenings, weekends, and any concept of rest into an amorphous blend of emails, phone calls, and urgent last-minute meetings. The idea of logging off is something that happens in Western TED Talks, not in Baghdad. And then there are those who can’t even get into the labor force at all. Every year...
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