Do You Ever Just Feel Tired? – Commentary

By Mark A. Leon

Do you ever look in the mirror and question whose reflection you are seeing? You haven’t aged more than a day but you look and feel much older than your years.

Sometimes life just beats you down so hard that it is difficult to mentally overcome all the obstacles being thrown your way. It has a way of spiraling you into a state of depression. One where it is easier to admit defeat than fight your way out of it.

For some, it is an illness, a damaged relationship, job loss, keeping a family together, a tragedy, or a combination of things that piles up on your shoulders that you feel like a thousand pounds of weight bearing down on you.

It is in that moment of darkness that you realign your perceptions of life and begin to ask yourself some questions. How superficial was my life before? All the pet peeves I had were meaningless with respect to the suffering around us? What purpose and meaning do I serve in this life? It is these deep fetching questions that just compound the sense of despair.

Life is hard. I can quote until the cows come home the words of great literary writers and poets, but the words are nothing more than ink on paper. It is when the breaths become harder, the silences more deafening and the loneliness so isolated that reality really sets in.

What then?

You can sift through all your old photo albums and remember your childhood and how you had no responsibility, you were invincible and everything was simple and innocent but those are nothing but mere memories; reflections on past moments. The unknown is in front of you. If life is this hard now, will it get easier? The likelihood is not.

This by no means is a proclamation that suicide is an option or to run away to a remote island somewhere away from all communication. This is the life we lead. We think about our grandparents that went from not having a phone or TV to all this. What a remarkable evolution. Maybe we can look back and say times were easier back in the day and now technology is corrupting us, but that is nothing more than a set of excuses.

I don’t know the answer. I don’t even one when you stop being tired. I don’t even have to advise at this point on how to overcome it. Many are fortunate to have family, friends, values, and faith that guide them through what seems overwhelming. Some do not. Maybe clinging on to the few things that are consistent is the right start.

Whatever the answer is, we are listening. I guess in the end, whether you are a friend, foe, or stranger if you can help someone, in a way you are helping yourself by giving yourself a sense of purpose and achievement in making another life better, even for a moment.