Good Tired
My grandfather was a postman on the railroad that ran from the southern tip of Illinois to Chicago. He lived to be 97.
One day when I was dragging myself around his home expressing lethargy as only a youth can, he said to me, “Bobby, there are two kinds of being tired in this life. One, there’s the good kind of tired, and two, the bad kind. Ironically enough, the bad kind of tired can result from a day that you have done everything your job requires of you to be successful! But you might have won other people’s battles, lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams, and when it was all over, there was very little left in you, and when you go to bed at night, somehow you toss and turn and don’t settle easy. Good tired may happen on a day in which you’ve lost. You don’t have to dwell on this because you have fought your own battles, chased your dreams, lived your day, and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy. You sleep the sleep that is just, and you can say 'take me away.' Now, I’m not a rich man, and all my life all I ever wanted to do was railroad and deliver the mail. God knows I wish I could have been more successful in my work, but I rode the rails and sorted mail until I nearly dropped, and, Bobby, I am good tired now and they can take me away anytime.”
I’m not certain I fully understood the depth of his words that day, but as the years have passed, his words have stayed with me. If there is a process that would allow us to live our days, that would allow us that degree of equanimity toward the end, that would allow us to look at that black implacable wall of death and be granted that degree of peace and assurance, I want in!
Some people look at my being a professor in higher education and scoff at how easy it appears to be. Some may even admit that they are jealous of it. What these people don’t realize is the time and effort teachers pay on a day-to-day basis. People don’t see the three to four hours that instructors sit at home on their computers after working most of the day on campus. They don’t know how tired teachers get from having to perform in front of students, faculty, committees, and administrative groups.
Most of all, people don’t see the years of preparation it took to acquire a graduate degree---teaching what others wanted them to teach, writing what others wanted them to write, and fighting the battles that others wanted them to fight.
Those years of graduate school took their toll on me: it took part of my soul, but I don’t regret a single year; however, I wouldn’t wish that kind of insanity on myself again.
Now that I’m more settled and have work that I could only have dreamed of in graduate school, at the end of the day when the sun drops over the Hill Country and I ready myself for bed, I am usually “good tired.” I’ve fought my own battles and taught what I felt important to teach. For this I can usually rest easy.
My greatest hope for others is that they will find the same kind of work that will give them peace and assurance, and they can also say, “I am good tired now, and they can take me away anytime.”
enough
