Tired?

I don’t know about you, but I often get tired. Yesterday I was talking about how so many people get tired and I started to wonder…is it really tiredness we are feeling?

Our supermarket shelves and advertising in every conceivable media is full of energy pills and health foods and super drinks. We take coffee, coke and other stimulants to help us keep alert and awake, but are we doing ourselves a disservice.

What if we are not tired at all, but simply obeying the laws of nature. When the ocean is at low tide, do we complain that the ocean isn’t doing so well and needs bucking up. We understand that tides go high and low and that’s alright.

Perhaps we could be mindful that our personal tides also go up and down. And that slow peaceful restfulness, is just a state of being and not a sign of disability.

Wanting to sit, lie, sleep, go into a reverie, be cool and the like are states of being, that’s  all. Interestingly, when we deny ourselves the pleasure of slowing down, it’s narcotic drowsy power increases. 

What if we explored our low tide states instead of manically stimulating  and energising ourselves at every turn. What if we reconsidered the category of tired altogether. A first it seems a negative state in line with empty petrol tanks. What if we took tiredness and called it something else like…times of pleasure, rest and recreation. A time where wise people come to enjoy the state of rest.

We could  even look at tiredness in terms of variation and notice that our feelings of tiredness are not constant. That during any number of hours, our quiet time energy levels vary a lot. Low energy to high energy, all over the place. And so if we can have fluctuating energy during being so called tired, what does that say about the term tired. Other than it’s not a fixed thing.

Then because of mindfulness, something new starts to happen. The placebo effect. When you have found that tired isn’t a fixed negative state, but a nice, comforting one instead full of fluctuating energy, your sense of nourishment in the “low tide’ is vastly increased. Refreshment is enhanced. Then you truly know that our personal low and high tides, our ebb and flows, our ups and downs, are just the oceans of human nature at work.

Paul