Tolerating Life

There are, it seems, a number of people tolerating life.  They lack enthusiasm for it and are without energy to participate more actively in it.  It is a form of depression I have seen most often among social service workers, people capable of giving or caring for strangers, though not satisfied -- but perhaps sustained -- by this involvement.  They seem not to have the energy life may require, and act as though they had given it all away.  It seems a lack of appreciation, no sense of entitlement to anything more, and to suggest that they may change is suspect advice.  After a time they become rather gray, more drab than they had been, and everything about them slows.  They call it burnout, even though there had been little fire to begin with.  At that point life becomes tolerant of them, no longer inviting their participation, and those strangers for whom they cared arouse more resentment than concern.