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Are you exhausted right now?
Be grateful.
That is a good thing.
You see, that weariness is confirmation that your heart is working properly.
It is your humanity responding to so much inhumanity around you.
It is evidence of your goodness still fighting to feel useful, to push back against a steady and furious stream of ugliness.
Your heavy fatigue in this moment is the internal alarm that will not allow you to
proceed unaffected while so many grieve here, while war rages half a world away, while the planet burns, while there is so much brokenness in the place you call home.
To not feel any of that would be the red flag.
To not be brought to tears now and again would be a far more worrisome
condition.
To not occasionally be leveled by the sheer volume of the burdens in your orbit
would be a symptom of a far greater sickness within you.
It would mean, that like far too many people around you, someone else's pain is no longer of consequence to you.
It would mean that you had long ago learned how to anesthetize yourself from the suffering in your path, that you no longer felt emotionally tethered to other human beings whose suffering is so severe.
You being perfectly fine would be a dire diagnosis.
And that would be a far greater tragedy than all of the sources of your sadness, because it would mean that these days have claimed yet another compassionate human being and allowed apathy to supplant the space where empathy should reside. It would be proof of one more person joining the ranks of the willfully oblivious and emotionally checked out.
I don’t want you to end up that way and so I’m telling you to treasure the despair.
Listen friend, I know that giving a damn is the more perilous path, which is why so many refuse to take it anymore. It is the treacherous journey that will keep you up at night; the one that will furrow your brow and bring you to tears and frequently break your heart—but there is no other worthwhile way to live.
You are better because of the weariness, more human as a result of your soul's fatigue. The challenge is not to be so completely overtaken by it that you lose the ability to care, that you finally reach the threshold of what you can safely bear, that you fall and cannot get to your feet again to enter the fray.
You expiring early is not the object here.
Becoming a martyr of your own heart isn't the goal, either.
You being here a long time and caring a great deal, is.
So, I want you to take care of yourself.
Withdraw into the places of stillness and silence that give you rest.
Nurture your mind and your body with good things: with music and art and food that give you joy.
Shield yourself with prayer or meditation or exercise.
Surround yourself with people who too care deeply, so that you are reminded you are not alone.
Hydrate and sleep and be selfish about maintaining something of a balance
between the burdens of the world and your ability to carry them.
But don't expect you will not still be tired much of the time, that your heart rate
will not sometimes rise so loud that you hear it in your head, that you will not
temporarily be brought to tears and to your knees.
You may be tempted to envy those who don't seem to care because of how easy it seems for them, but resist that.
In days like these when so many are in such pain and when so many people have chosen not to be changed by that fact—your heaviness is understandable and actually quite beautiful.
You should be exhausted right now.
For a hurting world that needs people like you, I'm glad that you still are.
Rest and keep going.
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