The Pace of Life

I just saw a commercial whose tagline says, "Tired Sucks."  It's for some energy shot drink.  Its premise is that so many of us are running out of energy in the middle of the day that we need some sort of megaboost from the outside to crank us up to get through our days.  I know I am basically a massive accumulation of caffeine molecules holding hands and dancing to the music of the celestial spheres during the school year.  If I don't have my Diet Mt. Dew, bad, bad things happen in my own personal universe.

Even with that midafternoon boost, though, a pervasive sense of fatigue is something I think I have just sort of come to accept in my day-to-day life.  In fact, I think most people I know have.  Why?  Why are we living in such a way that we have to be slightly miserable at all times?  What are we all doing all the time that is so vital that we can't take the time to take care of one of the body's most basic needs?  I constantly see studies released suggesting that not only is sleep a key factor in our basic health, but that we actually need much more of it that researchers used to believe we did.

It makes sense to me.  Sleep is the body's time to take care of all maintenance tasks without interruption, whether that is heavy physical replacement or simple mental filing.  When we constantly short it on time to get those things done, why are we shocked when the end product is somewhat lacking?

I wish we could re-evaluate what we're doing that is taking the place of all that lost rest time.  And yes, I do know that at least part of mine disappears here into the magic box.  However, I'm thinking more of demands placed on us by a society that is constantly telling us that we must "do more."  It reminds me of this little wooden toy my Granny got somewhere in one of her trips with my grandfather.  You turn the handle and the wooden pieces inside move furiously around and around....but that's all that happens.  She said it was called a "Do Nothing."  That's what I feel like so many of the activities we cram into our lives are, furious motion with no real meaning, just something to fill up the time, something to keep our hands busy, and fritter time away.  In the end, all we've done is burn up moments that might better be spent more productively on something else, moments that perhaps we should have spent on nothing at all.

I'm not endorsing laziness.  I'm just saying that as the pace of life picks up, I am not sure the quality of life is increasing with it.  That's something I think we all as individuals need to think about for ourselves.  If we're not getting something truly wonderful out of all that pain and we feel like crap all the time, maybe it's time to have fewer five-hour energy shots and more power naps.