Boomers and Gen Z keep clashing over what taking care of yourself even means, and both are right about the world that raised them — one learned rest had to be earned through exhaustion, the other watched that exact belief wear their parents down to nothing

Boomers and Gen Z keep clashing over what taking care of yourself even means, and both are right about the world that raised them — one learned rest had to be earned through exhaustion, the other watched that exact belief wear their parents down to nothing

When a boomer hears a twenty-five-year-old say she’s taking a mental health day, you can see the word that doesn’t come out of his mouth: indulgent. In his world, you went to work. You went with a cold, with a hangover, with a broken heart, because the alternative was falling behind, and falling behind was not survivable. Now flip it. Watch that same twenty-five-year-old learn that her father worked thirty years and never once called in sick — n…