Tired of Being Tired

(And sick of . . .)

I have heard a lot of grumbling lately,

a lot of wailing and moaning about the world today. “Something is wrong,” people say over and over, but they don’t know what it is. They just know that something is wrong. I quite agree. Something is definitely, terribly wrong.

Every day seems like the same day.

Nothing really gets done. Nothing happens. And the next day is like the day before it and the day after it. If there are extreme tragedies, we tend not to notice them for long because we have become immune to them (as we have slowly been conditioned to do), and besides, we don’t even know if they’re “real” anymore. The “breaking news” of the day becomes the memes of the afternoon and the nursery rhymes of the evening.

And nothing gets done.

Diseases are not cured anymore, only “managed.” New electronics become old before they hit the shelf, and the newer ones on the horizon will bring more of the same big nothing. New video games, new movies, new songs, new artwork, new books….it doesn’t matter because they all have the same old theme: The victim, no matter how evil or grotesque in his thoughts, must be saved at all costs (including millions of other lives) because he is the sacred victim. The stories are so predictable and nauseating. And should one dare to be truly new and unique, it will be buried under 100 feet of cement by the end of the day. By the end of the hour, even.

I’m tired of this game. I’m tired of people being sad, and I’m tired of watching them being used (including myself). I’m tired of being told who the enemy is and whom I should hate, especially when it turns out to be me. I’m tired of mediocrity, I’m tired of lawlessness, and I’m tired of ignorance excelling among the exhausted population. I’m tired of beauty being twisted into a gammy-handed troll.

Mostly, I think, I’m just tired of being tired.

And of being in limbo, in that land between lands where you suffer for sins you can’t remember you committed. Walking into inmates with a blank stare, you ask them, “What are you in for?” They look at you as if you were a jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces that fell out of a box all over the floor of a busy coffee shop. They have no idea they’re imprisoned. And you realize it’s too late for them.

Well, it’s not too late for me.

When things go wrong, I go back to the beginning. That’s the only way to fix problems. You can’t repair a hole in a garment by taking two stitches in the middle of it and calling it a day. No, you go back and you reinforce that seam, that boundary, that definition.

First of all, I’m not listening anymore to people who tell me that life in the past was just as awful as it is today and it’s my “selective memory” at fault. That’s a bold-faced lie. Oh, they’ll point out this problem and that problem, this “social injustice” and that one. As if to say because things weren’t perfect in the past, because they weren’t pure heaven, we must throw it all out and forget about it and, of course, obey their manipulative plot.

Nope. I’m not doing that.

When things go wrong, you go back to the beginning. The only hard part about that is making sure you’re really at the beginning and not some rabbit hole with endless passages that lead nowhere, placed there by greedy merchants who want everything you’ve got, including your soul.

In his book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz calls all the things going on around us—the rules, beliefs, laws, religions, cultures, governments, all of the insanity—“the dream of the planet.” Each person has their own personal dream that includes all the things they have agreed to believe and run their life by, and all of the billions of personal dreams in the world combined are “the dream of the planet.” That’s society. That’s what we have agreed to believe is real and to abide by.

But even though you can perceive millions of things happening simultaneously, Don Miguel Ruiz says you can use your attention to focus on what you want to perceive. You bring what you want into the foreground, and the rest stays in the background….fading more and more if you can maintain your focus. Of course, the powers that be know this, and they constantly try to “hook your attention” and bring it where they want it to be—thus bringing your energy and creativity over to them for their purposes.

Ruiz’ four agreements are these:

(1) Be impeccable with your word; (2) Don’t take anything personally; (3) Don’t make assumptions; and (4) Always do your best. With these four agreements, you can eliminate a good 90% of the emotional upset in your life, and he goes over exactly how to do that in his book. This is how you get back into the Captain’s seat where you belong. Even if chaos is going on around you, you are not a part of it.

And that’s a beginning.

As I said above: When things go wrong, you go back to the beginning. To simple foods you make yourself. To elbow grease and getting your hands dirty and then clean. To simple music. To quiet rooms with candlelight or oil lamps. To a small fire to warm your feet. To car rides in the country on a Sunday afternoon. To long walks down dirt roads with no destination.

You stop immersing yourself,

bathing your consciousness in a constant diet of the sad and sickly dream of the planet. You say no to the false flags and half-told stories and hidden lies and all the manipulative drones who tell them. You stop looking for approval from others, trying to get “likes” by spewing the latest raunchy nonsense that deep inside you know is wrong. And above all, you give the electronic devices a rest . . . a long, long rest.

You go back to a life with simple chores done by hand, like washing and ironing and bread making, and you have simple meals eaten in peace. You spend free time reading a book . . . or painting . . . or making a gift for a friend. You gently nurse yourself through the withdrawal symptoms you will surely feel as you pull yourself out of the addiction of the planet, as you clear the cobwebs from your mind and claw your way back to the real world.

It isn’t easy.

You can’t control what others do. You can’t force anyone to do anything. But you can control your own reactions or whether you will react at all. You can control what you will focus on, what you will see and hear, and what you will shut out. It doesn’t mean you live in a dream world and are completely oblivious. You absolutely know what the score is, you just refuse to participate in the cruel, childish game. You can control your personal space.

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