Name: Do This When Your Battery Is Running Low
Uploaded: 2025-07-22T18:11:43.000Z
Duration: 3 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

It just grows convinced that it now hates mummy, that little brother should die, that the button falling off the cardigan is a catastrophe, that its self-respect depends on being allowed to throw the bread knife out of the window sharpened first.

And it's the role of the parent to notice what is being overlooked and say, very gently, but with deep conviction, Enough, we need to get you to bed fast.

We pay no such heed to how our bodies work and when our minds have ceased to do so.

We might have had six hours of patchy sleep, been awake since 6.30am, had four cups of coffee, answered 67 emails, crossed town twice, had four meetings, given two presentations, eaten four slices of pizza, watched 45 short viral films, read about 15 conflicts and 12 scandals.

And now, unbeknownst to us, we have entered a perilous zone in which we need to exercise extraordinary care to have any chance of managing a safe landing.

We need to sense how much danger we're in.

The danger of seeing only the idiocies of others as opposed to the reasons they might have committed them.

The danger of perceiving accidents as intentions.

The danger of being drawn to wind up someone close to us to alleviate our rage at what the world in general has done to us.

The danger of thinking that shouting might every now and then solve something.

We're in danger of forgetting how much the day has gradually depleted our sense of perspective.

We might not have done anything momentous or heroic, not have climbed a mountain or performed heart surgery.

What will kill us in the end will not be one big obvious thing, but many decades of invisible minor aggravations and low-grade frictions.

For example, talk about the need to tidy the upstairs cupboard, bring up what we might do for the holidays, ask why we no longer have any fun, pick this moment to go through the finances.

We must insist to our passionate minds that our mounting anger about the chip in the wall, the missing sellotape or the way the partner said really must be about something else.

And this we will have to address at another time.

We need to flag up to those we care about, though this doesn't read on our faces, that we have slipped into a hugely fragile state.

With a mild smile, we can confess that we have, to all intents, gone a bit mad.

We need to give ourselves a long bath and put ourselves in bed not much past nine.

Early for an adult, but a very good time for an exhausted small bunny who has been very active since just after dawn.

As kindly people have been telling us from the start, it will all seem a lot more bearable in the morning.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Do This When Your Battery Is Running Low

perspective

perceive

extraordinary

obvious