Tired and Treasures

We are embarking on the time of the school year when we are all tired. Not just physically but emotionally and mentally. All of the big and small decisions we make on a daily basis have taken their toll on us, and we are tired. We are tired, and we are not done, and we are tired. Daily attempts to show up with excellence are exhausting. A colleague and I were joking the other day that maybe we should try to be “mid” more often. Just “ok” at our work. The thought made us laugh, and we laughed further with the understanding that neither of us are built for anything but our best effort.

I write about this in Legacy of Learning. This idea that not everything is worth our best effort, and I still believe it. And clearly, I’m still working on it myself.

This excerpt comes from chapter 3, “It is humanly impossible to give maximum effort in all that we do. And yet, this may be one of the most destructive ‘virtues’ that we learned as a child and that we are passing along to children in our schools. There is simply no way to give 100% in every moment of the day and in every area of our life. Those are the unrealistic expectations we have for ourselves. And children sit in classrooms trying to live up to those expectations and failing at it every day because it’s not humanly possible. Not everything is worth our highest level of effort.”

Whatever is weighing you down right now, I hope you can find just enough energy to look at it more objectively. Maybe it’s truly important and worthy of your best effort, energy, and attention. But if that’s true, something less important is going to have to receive less. Don’t let yourself off the hook for deciding. Because whether it’s now or later, you will hit a wall. You will hit your limit, and it may be at the expense of your wellbeing or at the expense of your something important(s).

I love this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert and her book Big Magic, “Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here. I know that what you want for yourself, because that’s what I want for myself, too. It’s what we wall want. And you have treasures hidden within you-extraordinary treasures-and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.”

I’m not saying we don’t do anything with excellence or that we accept mediocrity. I’m asking us to make space for the wildly important. Space for our hidden treasures and interesting things because the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time to continue thinking so small.