Every day another article, pundit, economist, politician or expert warns darkly about the current rate of inflation and what it portends for our economic future. So I thought, why shouldn’t I join in, providing an alternate view of the subject? I think there is decent evidence to offer a deflationary puncture to the expanding alarm.
One survey I read recently said that 91% of respondents felt burned out, working through the pandemic. Another survey said that more than half the respondents were either making a job change or considering it, with burnout being the main reason. What, exactly, is “burnout”?
I think there are two reasonable definitions. One is exhaustion, simply reaching the end of one’s physical and mental abilities to continue to exert effort. If you’ve ever pushed your body beyond its abilities, you’ve experienced this. You can’t get enough oxygen to the hard-working cells, creating the condition of hypoxia, using the body’s own tissue for energy, literally eating oneself alive. Working long hours, not getting enough sleep, not enough exercise, taking care of the kids first–all of these things create exhaustion.
Another definition of burnout that makes sense is chronic stress, when the sympathetic nervous system (the one that causes fight-flight-freeze responses in a condition of perceived threats) dominates for too long. Deadlines, urgent messages, last-minute requests, demands for response, long lists of action items and the uncertainty in which we all now live cause our sympathetic nervous system to run hot, all the time. Chronic stress is a well-known cause of many physiological problems.
At the turn of 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a farewell speech to the nation. For those of you who may not know the history, Eisenhower was the commander of all allied troops in Europe during World War II, and later became the 34th President of the U.S., serving two terms starting in 1953. In his goodby speech, he did what most Presidents did as they left office–he acknowledged the solemn responsibility of passing on the mantle of President to a successor, emphasized the importance of preserving our democracy and gave advice to both government and those governed.
My Millennial daughter wrote me a note, asking about the events occurring in Afghanistan. She didn’t understand what was happening, and hadn’t been hearing much in the news over recent years. None of us have, really. That twenty year war has taken a back seat for quite a while to such headline grabbers as the Presidential election of 2020, the global pandemic, extreme weather events, hundreds of thousands of burning acres of forests, etc.
My response to her was, “It’s complicated. Brace yourself. The tale begins long before you were born.”
