I once spent some time at an Amish community, and I saw their elderly and sick all living relatively productive lives. They were cooking, cleaning, watching children, and performing other small tasks that made everyone's life a bit nicer. The only reason these "menial" jobs were available to them was the deliberate inefficiency of the Amish lifestyle.
If my elbow is broken, I can't cook efficiently. If it doesn't work correctly, same. If walking to the toilet saps my energy, I shouldn't be expected to do the same.
I should also now mention that elderly doesn't mean you are sick. Loads of folks are busy throughout old age. "sick" doesn't always mean you can't do anything, either, and I'm pretty sure the Amish communities take care of folks that can't.
If automation didn't involve pushing people into deep poverty, it wouldn't have as much opposition.
Automatic sending wealth to capital instead of labor is another issue, perhaps better viewed as capital ownership being centralized as the actual problem.
How this "spoons" analogy a good argument against that?
The other area where this falls down is standardization, and I think this is exactly a group of people to understand it. Twenty years ago programming was very much the Wild Wild West, but now, seemingly, everyone talks this Agile talk and now we "must" all program like one another, which includes odious morning standups and the being "on call" mentality of DevOps, plus even bog standard shops pretending that they have some kind of Silicon Valley burn rate and velocity to maintain. And if you cannot hack that, tough, find another industry. That's society and that's a transition that has been fairly rough if you are put in a position to count your spoons.
I think the comments to this post testifies that no one has unlimited spoons. Most people struggle. Some more, some less.
So, yes, all people struggle, but the struggle of some denies them reaching the threshold of energy required to do even the minimum expected daily activites. That threshold is the crucial separator between isolation and participation. .. not even to mention the socioeconomic effects.
In fact, when I first read it, it half-convinced me that I was sick too. Where were those unlimited spoons when I overslept, decided not to shower, put on a pair of dirty socks and sprayed them with deodorant because there were no clean ones left, got to the office an hour late, failed to complete any major task all day, fell asleep on the train and missed my stop, got home an hour later than I should have, ate half a tub of icecream and some raw carrots instead of cooking dinner, and went to bed leaving two days worth of dishes in the sink and still having no clean socks?
I'm still unsure whether I'm an unusually low-spoon individual, or whether the author thinks nominally healthy people are doing better than they really are, or whether there's actually something wrong with me, or what's going on.
So again, what is the point? I acknowledge that some (many) people have it worse than myself. Now what?
It is also a common recommendation to meditate on ones inevitable death daily. Maybe thinking about the fate of sick people could have a similar effect.
And of course one can wonder how to improve things for sick people. But that's only useful to some extent. I think it makes mostly sense for people in the social circle of the sick person.
I don't think there is much I can do for the spoon woman, safe for donating some money to Lupus research. And I also can not spend all my waking hours donating to various health research organisations (only so many spoons to go around). So maybe I donate some money to Lupus research, but beyond that, there would not be much benefit to me thinking much more about it.
Struggling is different: It takes some energy away, but for many, you can theoretically take away some struggle. Get a new car, have enough food and money, get over a temporary health condition. Get time to get over a divorce. There are curese for many struggles. The same things won't help someone with a chronic disease... who often have the same struggles as greater society on top of whatever illness they have.
Edit: Having read the story, the spoons are a metaphor for units of personal energy required to do a basic everyday task, and the choices, as used in above quote, are compromises you have to make when you have too little spoons to do everything you'd like.
Edit2: man, it's easy to get downvoted in this thread. Do I come off as unsympathetic or something? I've been depressed for most of my life, so spoon-shortage isn't exactly new ground for me.
For what it's worth, I think that while freedom is everyone's ultimate goal, whether they comprehend it or not, it's not necessary for happiness (and not the same as happiness). Happiness is about accepting what is (whatever it might be). Unhappiness is about rejecting what is. To say that happiness depends on what you can do, is to project your internal rejection onto the external "capability", thus retreating to the comfort of not owning your own feelings.
Of course, if someone said "take this pill and you'll be able to do everything" I'd down the whole bottle, but that's because I'd rather circumvent the symptom, than face my own addiction to powerlessness.
Hard choices. The "Should I do X, or it will hurt me?", "Is it worth feeling bad for doing Y?" related to the disease and its impact.
It's not about choice as in a healthy person having a selection of 10 fun sports to decice which to play in a sunny day.
It's about difficult choices, like "I want to do this sport activity today, but should I do it and feel depleted for the rest of my day? I should double think about doing this"
In other words, we could say that healthy people have more options, but sick people (of the variety of the article, not somebody in a come e.g.), have more hard choices on what to do each day, even simple things (e.g. play with the kids).
A choice I might make is: will I go out for a short walk with the rest of the family? By doing so, I'll hurt even more, and will need to sleep when I get back - so extra pain for me, and the kids miss out on playing with me later for an hour or two.
In this analogy, you have $10 worth of attention to spend. Maybe as a novice rider you spend $5 just coordinating steering, clutch, gears and brakes to keep the bike upright. You then spend $3 on navigating, which leaves you with only $2 left to pay attention to the traffic around you.
A more experienced rider might only have to spend $2 on physically riding the bike, leaving them with much more attention to pay to traffic and road conditions.
The wise old man at the track was explaining how to go fast. The people in the garage that night didn’t seem to be getting it, so everyone got in the back of the Ford van they used for parts and the old man drove.
“You have a dollar to spend. You can spend it on acceleration, braking, or turning. You need to be spending the whole dollar all the time.”
He was coming into a turn faster than any Ford engineer would have expected, gas to the floor. “I’m still spending the dollar on the gas.” He switched to the brakes, slamming them without skidding. The guys slid to the front of the van. “Now the brakes, I’m spending the whole thing. And then to turning.” The guys hit the side of the van.
This continued on, him ranting about dollars while driving around the track. My friend timed the lap and it was embarrassingly close to what they did on their Ducatis. That old man speed.
During practice the drivers talk to their team over the radio about the car's setup. Most drivers would stop talking in the corners and come on the radio during the straights.
This driver would apparently just keep talking all the way around corners. Driving the car was basically automatic, leaving him free to focus on optimising the car.
I would argue that they are actually high benefit, or at least appear as such to the person.
I don't think many people would willingly choose to engage in high effort/low benefit activities.
> Low effort, small-scale projects with immediate benefit/utility are much less taxing on health and don't require constant maintenance
They are also much less fulfilling and interesting to many people.
In the end that's the way we learn and improve: by pushing the boundaries into unknown territory instead of always going with the methods that have already been working. To actually be sufficiently motivated to dive into a new hard area, having a goal is important, even if it's unrealistic. And when the time comes to actually build something serious it's good to be aware of what to expect and be familiar with the tools.
It is five stories, four of people with Chronic Pain, two that ended in suicides. My late wife Karen being one of them. The other story is of a doctor that the Medical Establishment destroyed for helping those with Chronic Pain. It is *NOT* a warm and fuzzy movie to watch.
For full disclosure I am a member of the cast, have been intimately involved in Pain Warriors production for several years. I receive no remuneration of any type. It is my mission to raise awareness of those suffering from Chronic Pain and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Leaks.
Pain Warriors can be found on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, Viemo (for international) and YouTube (sometimes, they are weird). The distributor set the pricing for the platforms and regions so check around for your best place to watch it.
We could really use your help. Our goal is to get Pain Warriors on Nexflix to reach a wider audience. For that to happen we need to have over a 100 positive reviews on The Internet Movie Database (the 100+ positive reviews on the other platforms don't count to Netflix).
Our segment in Pain Warriors is based on what has become known as "Karen's Journal". One reviewer wrote:
"Karen's first-hand account of her illness gave an honest, heart-wrenching depiction of what it is like to live with debilitating pain day-to-day."
Thank You for your help and bring up this subject here.
Was this the result of the industry crack down on the over-prescription of opioids and various opioid manufacturers being forced to cut opioid production and marketing?
Society went from one extreme of "we need to treat pain like a disease and medicate it", to the other extreme of "Holy moly we created an opioid epidemic, we need to cut production and sue manufacturers."
Obviously there were a lot of bad actors at play, and I imagine some legitimate practices and patients were collateral damage during these over-reactions.
like ... if the community turns against one of their own, they manufacture a sort-of constructive dismissal sort of arrangement, and the doctor who stepped out of line behaves and never does that again, quits, or goes out of business.
It can be remarkably brutal and ruthless, and i have no doubt that it is purposeful and cruel by desgin.
I'm pleased I now know where it comes from! This analogy helped us both come to terms with managing her lower energy levels.
* I use the term chronic cancer as she has Stage 4 cancer. The term terminal cancer to describe her cancer has been so incredibly unhelpful, its taken me years to frame where we as a family fit into it and how we can live. Essentially, the term has caused more fear than was warranted at the time. So until she needs end of life care, I won't call it terminal even though that is the expected outcome. That maybe 6 months from now or 6 years from now.
While we have many more spoons than someone who's ill, our spoons are still limited in number each day, despite most of us assuming they are unlimited.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-integrative-oncolog...
I understood, but I take it that it’s from this.
The article doesn’t say when it was published but it looks quite old.
Interesting that it’s surfaced here, now.
The metaphor is a bit controversial nowadays, some people identify themselves as "spoonies". See this discussion.
https://old.reddit.com/r/illnessfakers/comments/aoz87i/who_e...
I also think that there's much more celebration of "overcoming" disability or illness, rather than the much more sustainable (and difficult!) practice of changing your work patterns and lifestyle to live within your daily allotment of spoons.
Your pain level is now on par with dying cancer patients!
Everyone now considers you lazy and incompetent! Doctors now blame all symptoms on anxiety! You gain +1 to medical research ability. But -20 to Reputation.
You now get spontaneous and useless medical advise from people that believe in essential oil. You are now on timer with your job until sympathy runs out!
Disability now can mock you openly as clearly your faking and don’t have a real condition! You are now a burden to your family!
+10 sneak score; you quickly learn to hide your suffering!
+20 to loneliness!
-20 to persuasion! Asking for help means doctors think your a hypochondriac.
+10 Planning! Your kids may be orphans soon, make plans, read fine print on death benefits. ——-
Spoon theory is a great way to reduce guilt people who suffer, and simply can’t do as much on a day to day basis.
*The "In too much pain to eat" perk nullifies this status effect
Everybody has experienced having a flu. Everybody knows that feeling when you’re sick, and suddenly you realise how much you take for granted when you aren’t. In fact, you even start to _envy_ those around you who haven’t got whatever bug you have!
Being chronically ill is like living in that world permanently.
For every long rest, you get a limited number of spell slots - for example at level 5 you get 4 level 1 spell slots, 3 level 2 spell slots, and 2 level 3 spell slots. These are all the "major" spells you can cast before you need to long rest again.
Some things may be more straightforward, and only take a level 1 spell slot. But it's still possible to run out of those. Luckily, you're able to use a higher level spell slot to cast that same spell. Sometimes this makes the "spell" more effective (using a higher level spell slot for programming might relate to intentionally putting more focus on it), other times you're just burning the higher leveled slot.
Other actions/spells may take more focus/concentration/energy/effort to do, akin to using a higher leveled spell slot. Naturally you can't do as many of those without resting.
Still other actions/spells are trivial for you to do. You can do those as many times as you'd like, and you don't feel (significantly) affected by them. These are your cantrips - the simplest spells, that can still be very useful.
I like this variation of the theory not just for the gaming flavor, but also because it changes the concept slightly from "this takes more spoons than that" to differently sized spoons, which feels more in line with how I relate to the tasks that give me trouble.
Now you have a chronic medical condition. With your particular condition, getting out of bed a level 3, you have no cantrips, and you need to spend 2-3 level 2's per week going to the doctor (rather than 2-3 per year). Now, you've used up your level 3's just by getting out of bed and going to work, you need to use level 1's to go to the bathroom, and you used a level 2 on a doctor appointment (so you're out of them by dinnertime).
Someone else may have no more difficulty getting out of bed, and may not need so many doctor appointments, but randomly once a month they just don't get any slots back in the morning. So, they need to keep that extra level 3 in reserve to go to work tomorrow in case that happens.
I know people who are comfortable saying "i'm all out of spoons/only have a few spoons left"; it's pretty useful as frameworks go, and hard to express these things so succinctly in other ways. Just saying, e.g. "I'm drained" doesn't cover it when "drained" is the baseline.
I was worn down by undiagnosed celiac for years. That was finally diagnosed, but then I became mysteriously ill again for a couple years, which turned out to be type 1 diabetes (actually 1.5, LADA). People definitely don't understand what it's like living with a limiting factor like chronic pain, fatigue or organ dysfunction until they've experienced it personally or watched someone very close cope with such a thing. Besides how difficult as the physical and mental issues have been, it's also cost me many relationships, financial independence, personal development and a great deal of work opportunities.
I can easily connect with the message of the spoon holding, but I see I misunderstood the metaphor. I didn't realize spoons were like effort tokens... I thought it just meant you had to do everything all day with the inconvenience of holding a bunch of spoons.
I've been using this analogy for years, but never actually read the origin story. It is a great analogy not only for explaining to people why you cannot always do what they can, but it also helps people who acquire new medical problems think through what change they need in their life.
Not so sure about this... everyone has limited resources, time and energy being the biggest, finances usually a big one as well. How accutely you are aware of them perhaps depends on both your situation (such as having serious health issues that need attention) and what exactly you are trying to do with them.
Not taking your resources for granted is always helpful though. (Although someone else not sharing a resource doesn't necessarily make it worth more to me; e.g. I'm not happier to be able to walk specifically because someone else can't.)
