Strange but true: everyone suffers from the giant syndrome

I don't know, but I'm suddenly exhausted after a night out dining with friends. After a day at the office, I can actually do very little, except lie apathetically on the couch.

We're back
Is it just me or am I post-corona tired? Finally, everything is allowed again and we can chat away in that whole ‘old normal’. We're traveling again, slowly but surely, but still. We're working outside the home again, sometimes, and increasingly often. We're meeting up again, we're back. And yes, that's fine. But it's also incredibly exhausting.

Recognizable for many: you're suffering from the big syndrome. That means: you're extra tired from everything you're doing now that more is allowed, simply because you're not used to it anymore. Because you sat at home for a year or so due to corona and had to do so little. And secretly, that was sometimes nice. Working from home, eating at home, no appointments, no people around you on Tuesday evenings. You had no social obligations. You didn't have to do anything. Corona has changed our brains.

Everything is heavy
According to anthropologist Kalervo, it goes like this: we have adapted to all that not being allowed and not having to do anything. You can compare it to people who have been traveling for a long time or living far away in a tiny village: they are far away from the inhabited world. And when they suddenly return to the ‘normal rhythm’ of the day, it hits hard. Everything feels heavy. Due to the neuroplasticity of our brains, it constantly adapts to new situations: after a year and a half, we are literally not used to experiencing much. So we can't do much about it, but our brains don't know any better right now than that it gets a lot of rest, so to speak. And when you suddenly receive a lot of stimuli in that angry outside world, like in the pub, in the stadium, in the office, you get tired faster. Tired of the, well, normal life.

The lesson
The big syndrome; we all suffer from it to a greater or lesser extent. It means that you have difficulty keeping up with everything you now have to do again, now that it is ‘allowed’ again. You have post-corona trouble with all the obligations and activities. From a brain perspective, this has two causes: you have to relearn habits, like commuting. Honestly? Suddenly, your office seems infinitely far away. In the past, you traveled like this, hop, five days a week from left to right across the Netherlands. It takes time to get used to this again. And secondly, there is still a kind of fear in everyone's brain. What if you still get it? What if your mother still gets it? We are kind of in a post-corona era, but corona is certainly not 100 percent gone yet. And it will never be. How can we then live in normal life again? Of course, we are happy that so much is possible again. Of course, we are happy for all those hospitality businesses, all those events, all those clubs, and all those artists, but sometimes doing a little less is also nice. Let that be the lesson we draw for ourselves after this turbulent period.

The big syndrome, I get it.

Image: @kyliejenner