Languishing
It’s been shared in your feeds 3000 times by now, but on the off-off-off chance you missed it, Adam Grant has a great piece in the New York Times about the mood of the moment: languishing.
He explains: “As scientists and physicians work to treat and cure the physical symptoms of long-haul Covid, many people are struggling with the emotional long-haul of the pandemic. It hit some of us unprepared as the intense fear and grief of last year faded.”
In other words, the panic of the pandemic is over (in the sense that our nervous systems have adjusted to that threat), and now we’re dealing with the emotional aftermath of being on high-alert for so long. “It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.”
The power in the article is that he gives you steps to get out of the state of languishing; or, at the very least, to understand that naming it gives you power (somewhat) over it. It’s just a really great piece if you’re not feeling like your usual self and don’t really know why.
3 comments
I’ll admit to sharing that article. 🙂 It was a perfect description for my current frame of mind.
Apparently the flipside of languishing is flourishing, and they just published an article about that too. There’s a link to a quiz you can take to determine how well you are flourishing. I got 68, which is apparently about average during the pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/mind/flourishing-languishing.html
I’ve heard a lot about this NYT article but can’t read it because I’ve reached my article limit for the month — rats! (Yes, I know I could pay for a subscription, but I already subscribe to the WP and don’t intend to pay for both.)
I did take the flourishing quiz mentioned above by loribeth (just this morning!), and I scored 70-something, better than average among others taking the test. So I guess I’m doing all right?
The description totally fits, but to me, the word languish does not. I think of a fruit languishing on the vine—to me it connotes waiting to be picked for something, e.g. a dancer who keeps missing the cut on Broadway auditions, or a report on your desk waiting to be read. So it’s odd whenever I see this story mentioned, bc to me the word doesn’t fit. And for me anyway, a lot of those feelings are due to burnout.