TGIF for real. This has been one of those weeks that have felt like two. I can’t really account for why that is, but it is so. This has been a week filled with meetings, last minute requests, mind draining activities. But at the end of it, I am grateful. Today I was walking toward the lot where I park my car at work. I was leaving about 3o minutes early (though I generally arrive 30 minutes early at the beginning of the day, so it all evens out.) As I walked I was reflecting about how grateful I was that it was Friday, wincing a bit as I told myself how tired I was and how little I felt like getting into my car for the 75 to 90 minute drive home. And then I caught myself. Yes, I was tired. Yes I had worked hard all week. And yes, I suppose I “deserved” to leave a little early to head home. But then I began to think about what a privileged life I live compared to so many others and I had to stop short for a few moments and think.
I thought about people who work much harder, for much longer hours and much less pay. Like me they are grateful to have a job, to be able to keep a roof over their heads and perhaps feed themselves and their families. They may take their hard work in stride: it’s what they do, what they’ve always done. And like me, they get tired at the end of their shift, their work day, their work week. If they have an end to their work week. I work with a number of people who also work other places. I know people who work two and three jobs to make ends meet. They are not thinking about retirement and their 401k; they’re thinking about paying rent, putting food on the table, and keeping the lights and heat on. I have lived the life of barely getting by for a relatively short time. It was challenging and it was scary and I got through it.
It is not my purpose to make myself feel bad for expressing my tiredness; I can guilt trip myself with the best of them, but that is an unhelpful exercise. I guess what I came to was that tired is relative. I am tired and grateful that the situation in which I currently find myself allows me to take the next two days–Saturday and Sunday–to rest from the work I did on Monday through Friday. I will spend these next two days as I choose, and while that might include doing some work for my job or some work in the house and yard, it might not. The weekend might see me collapsed on the sofa catching up on all the TV shows I recorded during the week. This is a privilege that I have that perhaps others do not; I am aware of that, mindful of my blessings.
These are odd ruminations for a Friday evening, I suppose, but it is what is present with me at this moment. I am grateful that even when my mind is tired, my spirit is tireless. I know that at the core of my being all is still and calm and that my spirit is communing with God, gaining answers to questions my mind barely has brought itself how to ask. On a good day, little pieces of that communication bubble up to the surface of my consciousness and I get the kind of inspiration that I wrote about yesterday. Then I sink back down into the mundanity of life and forget that I have access to that font of information, inspiration, and answers 24 hours per day, seven days a week. That knowledge is a beautiful thing and I am deeply grateful to know that it’s there.
