These days, you hear a lot of people complain about how tired they are. Tired from work, tired from stress, tired from not enough sleep, the list goes on. Everyone wants to feel refreshed, but overdoing it seems to be the name of the game. Being tired slows us down and makes life harder. Tiredness is therefore a bad thing, right?
I just came back from a weeklong out-of-state hunting trip. Three-thirty in the morning was our normal wake-up. A few days of this and you start to really understand what tired means. Add anywhere from two to fifteen miles of walking up and down mountains, and you will really start to feel weary!
The thing is, even though my body is exhausted, there is a special kind of joy to working hard and waking early. At night, you sleep like the dead because you’re desperate for rest, and you wake more refreshed because of it. You might drag about for a bit before you’re really awake, but once you get going you have a special kind of energy that you can only get from deep slumber.
As I recover from my vacation, am I tired? Absolutely! However, in many ways, I feel ten times better than I did before I left. Not only did I have the peace of an awesome trip, but I can count on great sleep to help me recover. I am going to make a strange argument here… I think being tired is good for you now and then. We seem to be going about our tiredness all wrong, though.
We let stress, overwork, anxiety, and a multitude of other problems be the things that make us tired. Likewise, we fail to take time for the fun things that should tire us out. Long walks, beaches, swimming, hiking, hunting, paddling, whatever it is that you love doing outdoors! Fresh air and some hard work mixed with fun will give you a healthy tired. The kind where you sleep well and feel better because of it.
So, what kind of tired are you? Are you burned out and done with everything, or are you joyfully exhausted from having too much fun? Make time for joyful exhaustion and see what it can do for you!