Tired

I’m sick and tired…no, that’s not what I mean to say…come on, William, engage the brain…ah, yes, here it is, I’m tired sick.

Literally.

It’s around 03:30 (AM, for those of you not accustomed pilot-speak-24-hour time) and I’ve got my eight-month old baby cradled in my arms as I ponder this (I didn’t have the opportunity to type this out until well after daybreak.)

My throat is swelling and sore. My nose is stuffy.

And I’m tired. So, so tired.

I haven’t slept properly in…well, in eight months—since little Teddy was born.

So it’s not a one or two night deal. We’re talking accumulated fatigue here. Big time.

It’s terribly difficult to run every day. Let me be a little more honest here: I run every day in my dreams. In reality, I run several times a week, if, and only if, I’m not too exhausted to run (which is most of the time). So I don’t run several times a week. I run whenever. 

Sometimes.

Rarely.

Okay, hardly ever.

I feel like my body is falling apart.

My wife runs, though. (Don’t ask me how she does it.) In fact, she runs just about every day. As religiously as I practice the piano.

My mind tells me if I run, I’ll drop dead of a heart attack or something.

But I digress.

What I’m saying here is that I’m tired. Too tired to do many things.

Including, I tell myself, making the decision to be present. 

“I can’t do that. I don’t have the energy. I just can’t.”

I tell myself this, but I know I’m lying, so I say, “Okay, let’s do this.” And sometimes—about as frequently as I run, unfortunately—I actually do.

This is what I’ve discovered: If I’m really, really tired, which I usually am, it’s actually easier. Sounds nuts, right?

I mean it takes a lot of energy to be present—to observe thought like one would a distant cloud, without identifying with it, right? At least, that’s what I used to believe.

But Adyashanti says just the opposite: according to him, it takes tremendous energy for the ego to perpetuate itself through thought. That hasn’t been my experience, but I prefer thinking Adyashanti’s way. Why believe some thought that makes life harder?

It might be easier to be present when the body is exhausted, because I’m too damned tired to even think much. So the stream of thoughts is just trickling in, rather than flooding my mind.

While it may be easier to be present when I’m deeply fatigued, the clarity I experience is little more than a powerful awareness of my physical exhaustion.

It’s still presence though, and so there goes my excuse, “I’m too tired to be present and practice mindful awareness.”