the.com/watchfulness
Paranoia with better PR — alertness that never clocks out, even on vacation.
means The state of staying alert and attentive, watching closely for danger, trouble, or change.
from Built from 'watch' (from Old English 'wæccan,' meaning to be awake or keep vigil, itself tied to 'wake') plus '-ful' and '-ness,' stacking 'full of' onto 'watch' to make a noun of the quality. The root sense of watching is bound up with sleeplessness — the original watchers were literally people fighting off sleep to guard something, which tracks with why the state still feels so exhausting.
- origin
- from watch, as in staying awake on purpose
- biology
- your amygdala never actually sleeps on duty
- virtue version
- monks called it the guard against sneaky thoughts
- overdose
- too much becomes hypervigilance, its anxious cousin