Resisting the threshold

This blog is starting with an idea which might not correspond to everyone’s truth.

It might hurt people’s feelings and for that I want to apologise.

This is a theory I have based on what I have observed.

Burn out, the decease of our century

I remember studying the French authors from the 19th century.

“Le mal du Siècle” was The decease of the century from that class of young men who felt bored, and felt desperation. Réné de Chateaubriand is the name that always come to my mind when I think of that period. But even more famous for understanding what was happening was Alfred de Musset with his “Confession d’un enfant du Siècle”

Those young noblemen had money, education, a career decided for them and somehow felt that they had nothing exiting to live for.

It is a very interesting study but very sad as well as it conducted many young people to commit suicide as they could not see a happy, fulfill life ahead of them.

I feel that we have reached the complete opposite, in our case our lives as so busy that we have no actual time and therefore end up burn out

‍ Keep on swimming….keep on swimming

Again I am using a reference this time from a lovely cartoon, Finding Nemo where Dory has short term memory loss and sings “Keep on swimming…” but does not remember why she is swimming.

In our case, it is not about swimming for no reason, it is swimming so we do not sink.

The issue is that we are flooded by so many streams that we need to keep going just to stay afloat.

Streams are work, family, friend, hobbies, social media….

We in the opposite of our 19th century friends do not know how to be bored.

We have every second of the day accounting for and our brain has no rest what so ever.

“I am busy” as a Bee….

Do you remember when you used to say Hi to people and ask how are you and the answer “I am fine, how are you?” have you noticed has the answer has now changed to “I am super busy…how are you?” The state of business is now the constant state that we are in.

Rarely do you hear someone saying, “I am so chilled and relax, life is great” no it is always busy, on the run, going from one event to another.

First thing in the morning, is looking at your phone for that dopamine fix.

Children are saying they are bored the minute they do not have a tablet in their hand. You see all those babies and toddlers in their pram with devices to keep them entertained.

It seems that parent feel guilty if their child is not “busy” or occupied to do something.

You hear all the time, parents saying how tired they are because they have to spend all their free time entertain their children.

I do not remember my parents worrying about that, we had to keep ourselves busy when we were bored.

And there was always something to do, if I were to tell my mum that I was bored she would look at me and point at the laundry needing attention or the kitchen needing to be cleaned up. So you would not ask and just find something to do yourself.

But now you do not get to ask for help because you have that tiny device which consumes your life which makes that not only nothing gets done but you always feel tired and running out of time

It happens once….you lose grip

So you hang in there, you juggle all your activities almost dropping the balls for years and one day….it falls.

One of the busy action in your life is too much and you cannot go on anymore.

You will ring your boss to say you cannot anymore, working 12 hours a day, being pushed all the time with only the failure being pointed to and none of the victories, those are brushed off.

And you get that burn out which cannot be avoided and you take that time off, the time you need a few days, a few weeks, a few months…..all depends on how bad things are.

You see all big companies now have programmes to help with mental wellbeing, support so that you can keep working longer before the burn out hits you.

Delay that burn out because, and this is where my theory might become controversial, I believe once you have reached the burn out once, this threshold is gone and the burn outs will keep happening.

I am not blaming the machine here, I just believe if you have taken the time off because it was too much, the limit has been reached and now that line is very crystal clear.

That line is palpable and you know it is real.

Next time, the feeling of overwhelming is there you do not hold on anymore, you know there is a way out of the stress and that door that was opened once never closes back and remains ajar for ever, and it is easier and easier to cross the door and the limit each time gets closer.

I believe that is why people are resisting burn out as much as possible because once the door has been opened it can never be closed fully.

And it is a pretty scary thoughts and place to be.

Push the theory to the limit…

So we talked about work and burn out which once has happened will most probably happen again in the future.

But does this apply to other forbidden fruit?

I wonder if this is the reason that we say “Once a cheat always a cheat”

It is a very difficult step to take to betray your companion and I assume it requires some preparation, but let’s skip the details on how it happened.

But if you do decide to cross that line, cheating, lying, stealing, killing, it seems that the first time if the hardest but then the threshold reduces each time you do it again.

Obviously the killing part is very extreme but when you study serial killers you can see the escalation process.

I guess that is why we are raised with principles and morals values so that line seems too hard to cross for most people so that we live in a safe enough environment where people are scared of the lines.

I think the easiest line is lying, or telling your version of the truth but is this not the start of an escalation. A lie require another one to keep appearances and so on.

And if you crossed the line in any of the above case you can really once again close the door fully?

That is how I will leave you, with the thoughts of your own threshold.