Modern exhaustion, overstimulation, and the loss of rest
Why are we so tired all of the time?
Honestly, it’s because we don’t sleep enough.
The end.
Just joking, but seriously: we don’t.
But why don’t we sleep enough? That’s the mystery to unfold a little in this piece.
The low-hanging fruit on this is obvious: modern tech.
It turns out that staring into an addictive screen pummeling you with both absurdist memes and violent altercations until 2am every day does not, in fact, lead to the best life outcomes.
Everyone loves to rag on the technology we have let colonize our entire lives, and this isn’t unwarranted.
(It’s everyone’s favorite pastime, as they feverishly type their ironic perspectives into a tiny writing pad into their pet billion-person digital town square.)
All of us would do well to relax our nervous systems via some very practical things like simply sometimes turning off the silly flickering idol we’ve given our life force to for years.
But like I argue in another piece, modern technology’s god-like power only perpetuates because of the vacuum we are permitting to grow inside our lives, both individually and corporately.
Why we keep reaching for screens, food, and distraction
We are tired because we aren’t sleeping, and we aren’t sleeping because we are looking at screens, walking around under blaring daylight-equivalent light at midnight, and eating way past dark.
But we are looking at screens and looking to food because we are trying to assuage the gaping loss of meaning none of us were ever made for. And the truth is that if we begin to gently but courageously look at this real hunger, we can often manage to break the spell that drives these behaviors by starting to address the actual hunger rather than the apparent hunger that is really just distraction.
We are beings of meaning, and if we reduce ourselves to appetites and try to placate ourselves there, the deeper hunger will only grow.
Now, I am a realist. I think most things in life are contingent and symbiotic when it comes to human behavior. Seeing a friend lifts the mood; the lifted mood helps us feel motivated to do some of the things around the house in need of tending; that tending gives a sense of accomplishment and drives us to take care of our bodies; a good workout grown out of this motivation helps us want to eat better food to fuel that process. And on it goes.
The deeper meaning behind our chronic fatigue
When it comes to our corporate exhaustion, it doesn’t need to be one or the other strategy.
We should do as much as we can to counter the behaviors that are harming us in concrete ways. Yes, we should develop the discipline of turning off our phones at a certain time every night and keeping it out of our beds.
But we also need to understand who we are and that this deep essence of ourselves requires proportionate fulfillment—through strong, loving relationships, through an orientation to God, through infusing our work with deeply human meaning.
We will not relieve our exhaustion any time soon without a revival of joy and addressing the deepest needs of our hearts.
So, turn the phone off.
But also crank up the meaning.
KAY CLARITY ARCHIVE 