When your sixty-something mother says she's too tired to visit this weekend, or your recently retired father spends entire afternoons on the couch, it's tempting to wonder if they've just given up. We live in a culture that equates worth with productivity, so when older adults slow down, we often misread exhaustion as laziness or lack of motivation. But here's what we're missing: that bone-deep tiredness isn't a character flaw.
This year, our committee knew that we needed a speaker who could hold space for our students who are navigating grief and loss, experiencing emotional burnout and mental health crises and struggling to show up for themselves and for others,
On a rainy afternoon last weekend, plans got cancelled and I found myself at a loose end. Given that I'm someone who likes to have backup plans for my backup plans, my initial response was panic. Now what? I wandered aimlessly from room to room, grumpily tidying away random items. Noticing for the first time in weeks that most of my houseplants were critically ill, I decided to give them a spa day.
I've been writing code long enough to remember when computers had 5¼-inch floppy drives and exactly zero network cards. Connectivity was a 2400 baud modem talking to a local BBS via the plain old telephone system. The notion of two computers talking to each other was conceivable-but just the two. The Internet was just a twinkle in the eyes of a few DARPA engineers.
A few years ago, I caught myself doing something that made no sense. It was late evening, my kids were asleep, the house finally quiet. I'd been counting down to this moment all day-dreaming of sinking into the couch, wrapping myself in a blanket, maybe even reading a book without distractions. But when I lay down and closed my eyes, something inside me lurched.
I was standing there, frozen in front of the shelves, phone in hand, scrolling through food lists that led to recipes that sucked me into the latest health trends. Ten minutes earlier, I'd come in for a bottle of almond milk. Now I was knee-deep in articles about the "five fruits to reverse aging" and a thread debating which pasture-raised vs organic eggs. My cart sat empty, my body stood still, but my thumb kept moving.
Imagine learning a new concept but having no time to sit with it, to understand it, or to learn how to apply it in your own life. Daily Niksen can help you reintegrate the thoughts, lessons, and emotions from the day.
