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Americans Are Learning Two Things Right Now — Hopefully
Perhaps Americans’ work ethic is too strong — and our self-importance isn’t helping.
For a country that’s shut down, there was more traffic than expected today. This is America, my home, where some don’t use much of their vacation time, and others don’t get any days off at all. Maybe not even sick days. Lots of us work through lunch.
After all, we “live to work”, we don’t “work to live”.
Much of the world is not like America. Though mindsets may be shifting via Millenials and Gen Z, demographics dictate that we simply don’t like sitting still, and we hate feeling unproductive. People here ‘come out’ of retirement all the time — not even out of financial necessity (until recently). It took some people I know several days of ‘sheltering in place’ to finally breathe and relax at home. Of course, the next day we need to get out of the house and do something useful, if possible. For those who rarely get time off, this is the only vacation they will likely get — although uncertainty doesn’t feel like much of a vacation.
In traffic today, wondering where everyone was going since businesses are largely supposed to be closed, I think I realized something:
Most of us in America would rather…
