Poor Health and Great Works

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1920

---

I’ve started to notice an unexpected common theme in my nonfiction reading: overexertion leading to debilitating health. Lately, I started specifically searching for memoirs and other books by or about people whose physical and mental health are outside the narrow parameters of “normal” or ideal health. However, the nonfiction I’ve been reading outside of this search frequently involves a discussion of the physical and mental health of those involved as a key component to understand the main subject.

• Woodrow Wilson experienced debilitating sick days frequently when overwhelmed by stress prior to the final major stroke that made his wife the de facto president for the end of his second term.

• Alice Paul, leader and activist for the Nineteenth Amendment granting the women the right to vote, occasionally worked so hard that she ended up in the hospital for weeks.

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt frequently got sick before and after his case of polio in the early 1920s and experienced debilitating health issues in his final months in office.

• Washington Roebling, the chief engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge, after getting sick from caisson disease while overseeing construction, he remained physically disabled for the rest of his life and would have had to abandon the project except that his wife took over the brunt of his work much like Wilson’s wife.

• James Eads, builder of the St. Louis Bridge (a bridge of many firsts including the first bridge to pioneer the caisson technique Roebling applied to the Brooklyn Bridge), was an entrepreneur who had several distinct ventures over his lifetime frequently separated by an extensive illness requiring weeks and months of convalescence.

Are people who pursue great works like these men and women genetically more susceptible to poor health? For example, Roosevelt was always picking up infections even before polio permanently crippled his legs. Or would the same level of exertion have damaged the health of anyone?

When I started my year of AmeriCorps, we were warned that those who brought the most passion to the work were the ones most likely to burn out before the end of the year. In the early months, observing the amount of energy the passionate people brought to the work it was hard to image them burning out, but invariably they did.

Many years and jobs later, I burned out over a project that I was overly passionate about. I stopped sleeping and experienced cognitive difficulties similar to those caused by COVID/Long COVID brain fog. If I had continued to prioritize that project over my health, I’m sure I would have eventually seen even worse health outcomes.

Besides the people I listed above, creatives like Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jane Austen, and Emily Bronte often suffered poor health and the later two died young.

Can passion be harnessed in a way that doesn’t destroy health? Can great works happen without the sacrifice of health?

---

Feature image credit: great wall by Isaac haq from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)