Last night, I imagined myself as a boiled frog.
Laptop in my lap at 8:30 pm, I highlighted text from one page, copied it and pasted it onto another page. Over and over. cut Copy. Paste Onto the next page.
highlight Copy. Paste Onto the next page.
Next to me, my daughter and wife were having a great talk — about kids dating (and not dating) in high school, about planning for college, about the last few months of her senior year.
I? highlight Copy. Paste Onto the next page.
My wife reminded my daughter that she had preserved her high school prom dress in the basement. “Why don’t you go try it on?” my wife asked. A sentimental keepsake, this dress has zigzagged the country in moving trucks, making stops in at least eight houses in three states. The dress is a decade older than most of the students I teach at the University of Kansas. Seeing my daughter try it on would be an incredible family touchstone.
She tried on the dress, answering the question that I wondered when she was swaddled in her crib for the first time: “What will my daughter look like when she is grown?” She stood there elegantly with her mom cooing her approval in the background.
I? I snagged a quick photo and told her she looked beautiful before returning to my laptop. highlight Copy. Paste Onto the next page.
With all of that highlight-copy-paste, I have become the boiled frog.
As many people have pointed out, the fable of the frog and the pot of boiling water is garbage, scientifically speaking. To imagine a frog voluntarily lounging in the kettle without being restrained is absurd. But then to imagine this poor frog chilling in the pot long enough that lukewarm water can come to a fatal boil? Come on.
But yet the metaphor — as flawed as it is — you persist. We need this image of our lovable amphibian friend simmering to illustrate something so familiar.
As one website (with a terrifically 2006 vibe) puts it, the fable illustrates “how humans have to be careful to watch slowly changing trends in the environment, not just the sudden changes.” AllAboutFrogs.com continues that the image “keeps us paying attention not just to obvious threats but to more slowly developing ones.”
So it is that I revisit the image here, this time to illustrate how many of us have succumbed to the creeping invasion of work productivity into our home lives. First through cell phones, then through email, then through smartphones, and finally through our pandemic home offices, the hours of our work day have stretched longer into our private time. With each workplace innovation, the water got warmer.
To be clear, this white-collar fact of life comes with many privileges — namely higher wages and greater flexibility. I’m not calling for personal pity or government reform. In fact, many of these hours, when work and home are blended, are my fault. The ambitious project that can’t be completed before 5 pm The compulsion to check email at unreasonable hours. The fact that I love my job in so many ways that I seek it out when I should wall it off.
The cruelest irony? I am frantically typing this very column in the few minutes that I can find quiet before family dinner. My daughter just drifted through the kitchen, and I slung her a perfunctory “hi” as I glanced up from this document.
Not to overvalue nostalgia, but it was never this way for my dad. When my dad came home in the ’80s and ’90s, he set his briefcase in the same place. It did not budge until the next morning. The family dinner table didn’t compete with budget documents shared in the cloud or texts from co-workers about the next morning’s meeting.
The incursion that work made into my dad’s life was instead through grueling travel: sitting on the tarmac of Chicago’s O’Hare airport for hours in winter weather. In these cases, the after-hours work time cleaved our family with physical distance.
For my generation, the creeping family separation is through our attention. While we may be physically present, our attention is diminished. As a dad, it leaves me wondering what message is more alienating to our kids and spouses. Are we pulled apart more by a job that places us hundreds of miles apart? Or a job that sends us into the home office at 8:15 pm to work on spreadsheets?
This creep of devices into every crevice of our free time – especially on behalf of almighty work – is certainly more common in our 21st century lives than the fable of the frog. Maybe this phenomenon is common enough that we can discard the metaphor of the boiled frog altogether.
After all, who wants to keep this boiled frog that’s been hanging around for decades?
Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.