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Because You’re Tired Today…


Do you feel woozy? 

There’s a specific kind of motion sickness afflicting you and me, but it’s not the kind that happens when we’re jostled wildly on a theme park ride or trapped in the backseat on a twisting mountain road trip or stuck in the front row of an IMAX Michael Bay marathon.

This particular illness is an addiction to movement; a relentless fixation on activity, a persistent compulsion to feel as though we are productive. It is the perpetual drive to more and greater and faster and better that propels us through the furious blur of our everyday—and causes us to miss a good deal of it.

We run and sweat and strive and chase our seconds away, always arriving at any given spot breathless, frazzled, and eyeing the next spot off somewhere in the distance we think we need to sprint toward. Most of us have spent so much time in this hyper-urgency that we’ve forgotten that this is not normal, that it isn’t supposed to be like this.

Our speed is literally making us sick and yet we adore it, we aspire to it, we worship it like an ever-distant God who would deign to bless us if only our velocity could increase slightly and we could do and be enough to deserve it. We run through our days, not with the lightness of one who has joy simply in running, but as one desperate to catch something they believe will give them life.

This frantic pace is not deserving of our allegiance.
It is not worthy of our devotion.
It is a manmade devil; a cruel dealer stringing along an addled adrenaline junky with the prevailing promise of a fulfillment that never comes, leaving us forever chasing a high that is always just beyond reach.

And so, we live wearily.
And so, our bodies and souls are exhausted.
You my friend, are tired.

And because you’re tired you need to give yourself a priceless gift: You need to give yourself permission to stop; to consent to a stilling that will bring rest and peace and save you from drowning in the stirring sea of your own making.

It’s difficult I know, because we both live within this twisted equation; that activity equals productivity, and productivity equals our value—and that values merits us love. Our motion then becomes a barometer for our worth, and so we rarely slow ourselves for fear that we will lose something, when in reality it is in our very inability to pause and breathe, that we lose.

We lose our awareness in the moment, the fleeting sacredness of here.
We lose the sweet gift of being fully present in that now moment that is so very difficult to grasp.
We lose our availability to those right in front of us who need us to see them well.
We lose our very lives, second by squandered second.

Our soul fatigue is not something we need to be resigned to. It is not a forgone conclusion that we succumb to this motion sickness, but we must be willing to set down our need to be defined by our achievements and our accomplished tasks, by the to-do lists we plow through or the kudos we secure.

We have to reclaim our beloved-ness which is not tied to our resumes or checklists or velocity, but to our very breath and being.

Because you’re tired, stop running.
Because you’re tired, slow down.
Because you’re tired, breathe.
Because you’re tired, rest.

Because you are tired, do nothing and trust that this is enough.

You are already worth it.

 

 

 

 

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