UNITED STATES—I recently had this debate with someone and it was bit heavier than I thought. When you think of the words ‘exhausted’ and ‘tired’ many would argue they are the same thing. When I think of the word exhausted, it reminds me of just being burnt out; your body has reached its point of no return. When I say no return, I don’t literally mean it, but your body takes a moment to rejuvenate itself.
Many Americans experience the notion of being exhausted, but how about tired? That term is thrown around far more than what it should be. When I say the word tired I don’t mean it in relation of wanting sleep, I relate the word to being sick of something or getting to a point where I can no longer do it. You’ve reached your wits end and it’s time for a decision to be made.
I do believe it is rare, but all Americans run into a situation where you are just tired of something that you’ve been doing for a long time. It’s not yielding the results you want, you’re not seeing the perks that you want, you see people lack drive, while you’re giving above and beyond. In essence, you have reached your boiling point. That is never a good thing, because upon reaching your boiling point, you might start to lash out; you say things you might mean, but they’re not delivered the way you want them to be delivered. The list can go on and on and on.
The perspective that I have discovered is that just because you’re ‘tired’ of something doesn’t mean that you can get a birth of energy to bring back that joy or happiness that you once had for it. This can pertain to a ton of things including work, family, relationships and so much more. I will make the claim that if something is toxic; it’s causing more harm than actual benefit to your life that you have to cut out the cancer as I call it.
As human beings we can sometimes be in denial. Denial is like a really bad drug that you know you should not have, but you keep taking it knowing that you shouldn’t. You see the harm its doing, but you don’t care to make an adjustment to change how things are. I want to be clear with readers to not confuse what I’m saying as a focus on drugs or substance abuse, because that is not what I’m referring to here. For some of you reading this column, that may apply and if so you have a tough decision to make. Do I continue to take something that is bad for me, even with me realizing it is or do I take the next leap and do what I should have done a long time ago?
However, here I’m specifically referencing things that are not so tangible, like a job, a relationship where the highs can be great, but the lows are so extreme they outweigh the highs. You want to change the path where you current life trajectory has seemed to stall in; you know what you want, but for some unexplained reason, you refuse or you’re having trouble putting your foot on the gas to make things happen. Being tired and exhausted are not the same thing; think clearly what you’re saying before you actually say it because people might not FULLY understand what you mean.
Written By Kelsey Thomas
