Adrenaline Collapse

It is Wise not to rush about.

Lao-tzu


When I first started dating Shelley I was awed by her constant up energy. She called herself hypo-manic—having only the up side of the manic-depressive cycle. I reveled in her continued state of happiness.

When we moved in together, I did notice certain things that I found unusual. For example, she would procrastinate on getting jobs done. I would start to get agitated as the deadline loomed, however, as if playing a game of Chicken, Shelley was stressed but unmoved. Then, when she couldn’t stand it any longer she would kick into gear working 24 hours, then 48 hours, then 72 hours without sleep and often without food and water (sometimes there was more than one project), until finally completing the project and with minutes to go, making the presentation in time (successful of course). This was followed by collapse, recovery, and then a repeat of the cycle.

Then, one day, there was no recovery. I returned home from a 6 week trip to China and Australia to find her lying on the floor, a position she had been in for most of the time I was away. Medical tests gave us a shock. Their prognosis was likely lupus. Lupus is an auto-immune disease. It is when a person’s immune system, instead of defending them, starts attacking them. Why a person would attack themselves will have to wait for another blog entry, but the point I wanted to make here was that although adrenaline worked for Shelley for a number of years, it was unsustainable over the long run.

Shelley can still work all night and feel that she has accomplished something, but then it takes a week to recover during which nothing is done, followed by a month of discouragement and low energy. We may be addicted to oil, but our culture is definitely addicted to adrenaline. It’s no accident that Starbucks is everywhere. But there is another way, one that Shelley has begun to embrace since I started this blog—small acts done consistently.

It’s humbling to think that Aesop had this all wired 2600 years ago in the telling of his fable of the race between the tortoise and the hare. If you have forgotten who won, here is a clue; it wasn’t the hare.