Someone recently asked me what recurring themes I see as I engage with my readers, talk to folks at the church, and meet people on the street here in America.
One word came to mind: exhaustion.
Millions of us are thoroughly depleted right now, having spent the past months in a dangerously elevated state—fueled solely by adrenaline, caffeine, sorrow, and outrage. We’ve been sleeping terribly, eating poorly, exercising less, and in general allowing most forms of self-care to fall to the wayside; marshalling all our available resources toward surviving a non-stop onslaught of legislative assaults and social media IED’s detonated by this President.
The cumulative affect of it all—is that we are flat worn out.
I didn’t sleep well on November 8th—and I haven’t slept well since. I’ve either found myself struggling to fall asleep wondering whether Trump will Tweet us into nuclear annihilation; awakened during the middle of the night, terrified of sick people I love losing their healthcare; or shaken awake in the morning by the sickening thought that “Yes, that monster is actually the President,” and freshly grieving that my children have to see him at all.
Each day seems to bring another real or manufactured emergency, tearing through our latest attempt at normal and demanding our immediate, undivided attention. Each night we put our heads on the pillow, alongside a heavy sense of dread and sadness at what we’ve just endured.
We are fully and perpetually tired.
And this is all by design. This is how terrorists work. They rely on unpredictability, on continually creating chaos, on altering routine, on robbing their targets of safety, stability, and mental rest until they relent. It’s impossible to sustain a level of urgency required to combat all the sewage we are immersed in without losing our minds—and so we need to step out of it for sanity’s sake.
This is why, as we fight these repetitive atrocities, as we rally against legislative nightmares and civil rights violations, as we pushback against the relentless flood of horrible—we need to fight for ourselves. We need to guard our bodies, our minds, and our souls, because that is the one war we cannot afford to lose. When we’re no longer fully available to the people who love us, when we’re too tired to create or laugh or feel joy, when we become hopeless and bitter—the terrorists have won.
This week I think I finally felt the weight of the past few months; all the protests and pushing back, of opposing travel bans and healthcare bills and racists marches; of the family arguments and social media battles and church conflicts.
I think my body and my heart finally said, “Enough”—and I ‘m pretty sure I’m not alone. And rather than giving you some seemingly buoyant, inspiring, “rah-rah” message with you, or implore you to do more, speak louder, fight harder, I wanted to share this one with you:
It’s okay to be exhausted.
It’s alright to be weary and frustrated and burned out; to admit when you’re too tired to keep going and you need to step away and pause and breathe. That’s the way you survive and outlive your terrorists: by refusing to become as miserable as they are.
Today, maybe give yourself the gift of logging out, of shutting down, of not fighting; of taking some time to paint, take your dog to the park, or lay in the grass and watch the clouds. It isn’t irresponsible to do this and it doesn’t mean you aren’t compassionate or woke or invested—it’s caring for your soul and yourself and those around you, so that you’ll be here for a long time.
If you haven’t slept since November 8th, 2016, get some sleep. Others will fight for you while you do. That’s how this works. We carry each other through these days.
Yes, sometimes you need to change the world—and sometimes you need to take a nap.
Maybe today, do the latter.
Order John’s book, ‘A Bigger Table’ here.
