Tiredness. It’s a by product of this pandemic. A lot of us are tired a lot of the time. Tired of the rising death toll, the deceitful, treacherous politicians. Tired of the relentless trickle of bad news. Really bad news you couldn’t make up in a million years if it wasn’t for the fact it was scrolling across your TV screen on Fox or Sky or whatever channel you were enduring at that very moment in time. I’m tired of all this. I’m tired of being tired.
Tiredness desensitises us. We become so tired we don’t care anymore, turning our backs on the horrors of the daily news. Tiredness erodes empathy and compassion. It dulls our ability to love those we do not know and reveals the jagged edges of our souls. We become irritable, our resolves of patience at an all time low. We cease to care as to care is to expose your mind to pain and heartbreak.
It’s a two way street. Why should I care about a government who twist the truth to suit their own needs? Why should I care about those who openly flout the guidelines and put their own base desires before the lives and welfare of their own citizens? Am I stooping to their level, am I better than that? Possibly but I don’t care enough to slam on the brakes and edge back from the edge of that particular abyss.
Tiredness permeates every cell of our bodies, it’s a creeping osmosis of apathy and indifference. We are riddled with it, yet we don’t care. Rather, we embrace it, wrapping ourselves deep within its numbing embrace. We crave the sense of nothingness, we seek out the dark. For it hurts less than the light of truth, a truth that reveals the world for the train wreck it has become. We near the end of the tracks, destined to teeter over the precipice.
Routine kills. It sucks the marrow from your bones, leaving you brittle, dry and devoid of emotion. You become too tired to be angry anymore and when that time comes, you are in deep, incomparable trouble. A trouble from which there is no gallows reprieve, no last throw of the dice. When you no longer care, you’re no longer there, not really. You become a ghost encased in a tomb of flesh and sinew.
The heart still pumps but what for, what need is there for it anymore? Better surely to lay down by the roadside, to step off the beaten track and no longer scan the horizon ahead for signs of hope? A fractured faith is better than no faith at all he once said but what did he know? Better to wallow in the prose and poetry of the dying than bask in texts of joy and love. The words of old prophets turned to ash and dust, lying unread in motel drawers.
The vultures are circling overhead, keen to descend and pick at the carcass of what might have been. Our world will never be the same again, yet many of us are too tired to care anymore. Numbers are meaningless, my moral compass spins out of control as the voice holds sway. For I must be a bad person to have such thoughts, to wish an end to the idiots in power and all those beneath them. We, the uncaring, are damned.
So I’ll get up and watch the news even though I’ve seen it all before. I’ll scroll down the social media feeds, an obsessive desire to slowly drive by the car crash one more time. I have to see it again, to take it in with my own eyes. One time, one hundred times, it matters not. My incredulity is as before, my battered emotions ready for another pummelling. Tiredness intervenes, throwing in the towel to prevent another beating. It is a blessing. Too tired to care.
Black Thoughts 
Fantastic post! I feel much better for not watching the news much and avoiding twitter as much as possible! But this can be easier said than done!
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Thank you very much. I agree.
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I feel the same. But in my case I cannot se, walk, talk to anybody or hear a friendly voice, for there isn’t one there. Lying here in pain, I try to find some good news, whilst envying those that can at least cycle, or run, or simply go for a walk. And yes, I truly relate to this. The news is terrible, and it hits so hard that eventually you have to become immune to it. It is a goid job that I do not pissess a shotgun at this moment. I, like you, am jyst tired.
A good write!
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Thank you very much. Stay safe. Thinking of you.
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Maybe I’m too selfish or desensitized, but I can’t live with a defeatist attitude. There is still much good in the world. There are still those who are working to make this a better place. To relieve some pain, to soothe the suffering. To do there part, however small, to add joy and purpose to this place we all inhabit. Yes, this crisis is taking a tremendous toll on people, and it is going on much longer than we would like. But I must look to the innovation, the love, the care, the appreciation that is being displayed by more people and in greater amounts than we saw prior to the world being thrown into the clutches of this terrible virus. We will survive and be better on the other side of this suffering.
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Thank you. I see myself as more a realist than a defeatist.
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Can’t give in to the uncaring hoards and politicians whose only concern is their own struggle for power or their own personal horror show on the backs of the dead, dying, or uncaring. The tired is a part of the struggle we go through whether it is training for a marathon or living life the best we can. The tired does pass and I have to believe that good will come of this time in our lives. We just need to keep living, caring and working to be better than we were yesterday. Each day we are alive is a new day where we can continue to hope, pray and do good things for ourselves and others. This I do believe.
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Thank you very much Harold for your wise, uplifting words.
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True. Thank you for reminding me.
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this is what happens when all the governments rely on two people to tell the leaders (?) what to do next. It’s interesting to me that countries that didn’t follow the advise of the two people are getting away with fewer dead, less conflict, and quicker recovery. it will be interesting to see what happens when the dictator governors and med experts finally believe they’ve been had for the sake of power. if that makes sense. we aren’t getting too much info on you folks over the pond but there’s a rebellion beginning in the USA.
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A rebellion against what? The U.K. situation is out there. Just research it on the internet.
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Rebellion against the dictates of ignorant power hungry governors who don’t follow their own commands.
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The BBC news is the only one that I see that has a fairly calm and even-handed approach to the news. It is easily accessible in the U.S.
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I mostly watch Sky News.
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The ‘Like’ button seems inappropriate at this moment. I get it. I see it in the people around me. I wish I had answers and healing but there are none to be found. We lift one foot in front of the other, take one step, and keep mopving forward though. Thanks for your insights.
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I agree. Thank you for understanding 🙂
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I agree with you. I am tired too. I had plans for this spring and summer. Now they are all gone.
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We are all in the same boat, unfortunately. Hang in there.
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This post describes how I feel on and off. I can’t watch the news at all now because it sends me into a mental tailspin. So I do what I can to help those around me, I try to find some joy in every day even if it is small like seeing some of my flowers bloom or petting my cats. Hand in there friend. The sun will shine again! Also, I too have had thoughts of wanting to get a clean slate in our government but I don’t know how much it would solve. People will always be people.
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Thank you. You speak the truth, sadly. Stay safe and strong 🙂
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Wow! Powerful!!
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Thank you 😊
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I also have had bouts of “tired”. It’s spirit-tiring; it’s soul-sucking. I get that. There’s a point at which we are so beyond tired, we (I) feel like I’m going to burst out of my skin….and I’m more introvert than extrovert.
The soul-sucking tiredness that leads to apathy is what the ancients called “Acedia”, badly translated into English as ‘sloth’. I have been reading/meditating on/living with an excellent book of the same name by Kathleen Norris.
Kathleen points out it’s what the early monks and nuns in the desert called “the noonday demon” – you do the same boring, routine of basket-weaving (really!) and prayer. That’s it. All Day. By noon you are “Beyond the Point of Caring Anymore”.
The antidote is perseverance and mindfulness. Real mindfulness. Pay more attention to what you are doing right now.
Pay attention to how your keyboard feels under your fingertips. How you move your legs as you walk. The smell of the trees. The sounds of cooking and the taste of your food. Mindfully eat an orange – feel the bumps on the skin, the feel of pith, the sound the skin makes, the feel of each juice pod, and so on.
As for perseverance, Kathleen also suggests sit with the loneliness long enough and you discover you are not in fact alone. There is a power or force or something that is buoying you up (some of us might call G*d or Holy or Spirit, or even Life).
She’s right; it’s an amazing, mystical feeling to know that you and the goldfinch that just flew buy and the mourning dove (morning dove?) cooing all come from the same place and are kin. Sit with, befriend, the tiredness long enough and you get to learn what it is teaching you. (In my case it’s a new level of empathy.)
Here endeth the sermon. Sorry to get carried away, but it really does banish the sense of Fed Up.
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Thank you. That’s a refreshing outlook on it. I like your description of mindfulness. I will try that out on my run later 😊
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interesting thoughts expressed with such clarity.
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Thank you Sophia.
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Entirely my pleasure and I somehow feel good just watching the two of you in that profile pic. Be blessed with a new release of anointing to impact more and break bondages.
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