You can’t go anywhere, do anything, watch anything, read anything, or listen to anything of late without encountering something having to do with The Great Resignation. And anywhere you go, anything you do, anything you watch, anything you read, or anything you hear having to do with The Great Resignation will be accompanied by surprise.
People seem genuinely astonished that — in a climate of mandatory lockdowns, draconian social restrictions, escapes from office confinement, distance from overbearing bosses, and getting paid for not working — people are choosing not to work. It makes you wonder what the more marvelous effect of human nature is — that it causes people to react to conditions and stimuli the way they do (cause and effect), or they’re surprised that people react to conditions and stimuli the way they do (willful suspension of reality).
It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature
I don’t care about The Great Resignation. I don’t care about it because it’s understandable because it’s as logical as it is predictable. What I do care about is The Great Disconnection that’s resulted from mandatory lockdowns and draconian social restrictions.
You can tell me whatever you want. You likely will. But regardless of what you tell me, isolation causes pain. It’s loss, plain and simple.
In his book, Dear Dad, the late Louie Anderson wrote this:
I have this theory that all we deal with in life is loss. We lose the protective comfort of the womb. We lose our mother’s breast. We lose the right to mess in our pants. We lose friends, teachers, relatives. We lose our hair, our teeth, and our youth. We keep losing all these things and never get them back, but we never really learn how to deal with the loss. We never really say that it hurts, really hurts, and so we spend the rest of our lives trying to make up for it, holding on tightly to things that we really should let go of.
And in The Great Disconnection, we lose the contact, the interaction, and the company and companionship that define us as social animals.
Life Imitates Art
Last Thursday, in a music service to which I subscribe, I happened to find a piece called, “A New Morning”. Given the way it struck me, it might just as well have been called, “A New Mourning”. It prompted the reflection I’ve written here. And it prompted me to create this video:
When I shared it with JoAnna, she said, “It’s a bit more melancholy compared to some of your others.” It is. I couldn’t help that. No such contemplation could be anything but melancholy.
No mandate, no regulation, no lockdown, no resignation, no disconnection — however great, however long — will change human nature. As nature abhors a vacuum, human nature abhors isolation.
Let’s make sure The Great Resignation is followed by The Great Reclamation. We’re longing for it.
Let’s start now.