Senior Citizens Struggle with Suicide as Loneliness and Isolation Set In
I would like to see how the numbers stack up to other countries that have a better work life balance.<p>Here&#x27;s my hypothesis - the work life &quot;balance&quot; in the U.S. is incredibly messed up - like real bad.<p>The assumption most people make is &quot;Let&#x27;s work real hard while we are young so we have all the money we need when we are older. We will have fun then&quot;.<p>So right out of college, with six figures in debt, people are working 40+ hours&#x2F;week (typically 60+ hours&#x2F;week), working weekends without blinking an eye.<p>Everyone&#x27;s doing it, it&#x27;s the norm, so what&#x27;s wrong with doing what everyone is doing.<p>No one has time to make meaningful relationships.<p>Most people spend less than 3 years at a job, so what&#x27;s the point anyways. You can&#x27;t get a good salary hike without quitting your existing and joining a new company.<p>That model bleeds into one&#x27;s personal life as well - people are so busy working hard that they miss the opportunities to build a meaningful relationship with their spouse and children.<p>Guilt sets in so the spouse and children get showered with expensive gifts and vacations but they have nothing much to talk about during those vacations either so they spend most of their time visiting random places, taking tons of photos, posting them on social and handling the barrage of comments they get for those photos.<p>The emptiness does not resolve though - and when it gets intolerable the spouses file for divorce.<p>Maybe it will work out with someone else.<p>Once they retire - they have two big problems:<p>1. yes, they do have money, but don&#x27;t know what to do with it<p>2. they also don&#x27;t know what to do with the free hours they now have available!<p>As a result, they hand over their money to fund managers who proceed to loose all or most of that money because they are sure they can beat the market.<p>In the meantime, they have been so frigging busy most of their adult life with the one thing they did for their employers that they did not develop social skills (outside the fake &quot;professional&quot; facade) or general skills - and everyone&#x27;s so fake that it gets down under your skin because deep inside you can feel the fakeness so you hesitate to make more social ties.<p>With the money depleted and being bored out of their minds, what&#x27;s the next step?<p>It&#x27;s easy to blame everyone else for this, but the reality is the time is past for deep introspection.