Is being tired just part of getting older?

Not in the way you have been taught to hear it. Tiredness after a demanding day is not evidence that you are running down, and the leap from "I am tired" to "I am declining" is something we were handed, not something we observed. There is a gentler and more accurate reading available. Your body does its real repair when you stop, not when you push, so the heaviness that arrives at the end of a big day is often the beginning of the mending rather than proof of the ending. Which meaning you give it is genuinely up to you, and it matters more than you would think.

Is this it? Am I just wearing out?

This morning I finished the third round of my changing-my-last-name odyssey.

I got married in May, and after a lot of thought I decided to take my husband's name. I knew it would be an ordeal. I thought I was prepared.

You can't just stop by anymore. You have to make an appointment, and the first available ones are weeks out. First Social Security. Then the driver's license. Then my bank. I had to make an appointment at my bank.

Today was the second trip to the bank, because of issues that were no fault of mine. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Three major hurdles down. Then a few errands, home, lunch, and now, early afternoon, I feel wiped out.

My day did start at five in the morning, so there's that in the mix too.

And then the thought arrived, the one I think a great many of us know.

Is this it? Am I just wearing out?

The only story we were handed

Notice how fast that thought comes, and how certain it sounds.

We are given exactly one meaning for a day like mine. Decline. Slowing down. Running out. You hear it in the "well, at your age," and it lands like a guilty verdict.

My husband is a radiantly alive 78-year-old who still works full time. He loves his job. He retired some years ago and it didn't suit him at all, so he went back, and his years of experience add real value to his company.

He was talking with the HR director on Tuesday, and that woman said to him, in a very snide tone, "Why are you still working at YOUR age?"

Can you believe that?

That is the verdict, said out loud, to a thriving man. And when nobody says it out loud, we say it to ourselves at four in the afternoon with our shoes still on. It is the same forecast either way, and it has a name. I wrote about it in what the aging default actually is.

What if the heaviness is intake, not running out?

There is another meaning available, and it is a good deal more useful.

It happened to be the day of a big eclipse, and the teachers I listen to were all watching the sky. Though they speak different languages, they arrived at the same place.

Receiving energy, despite our assumption that receptivity is passive, is quite taxing to the body.

So if you have been running around town doing things and spending yourself, it feels depleting. And in an odd way, feeling depleted can be a sign that you are taking something in.

One of my teachers sent a simple drawing. Five figures, and a light moving through them.

In the first, the light enters. It does nothing yet. It is only received. In the next, it gathers and builds. In the fullness it begins to move and overflow. It circulates. And only in the very last figure, after all of that, does the body begin to regenerate.

I sat with that for a long time.

The renewal shows up only in the last picture. It has to wait for all the rest to come first. It comes after the receiving, after the building, after the patient gathering that looks from the outside like a tired woman on her couch doing nothing at all.

I don't ask you to hold my teachers' language as your own. Use your own words for your experience, your own name for the source of your life, your own God, your own word for the light. But see whether this doesn't ring true.

First you take the energy in. The vitality comes later.

Your body repairs when you stop, not when you push

I am reading a novel right now about a woman in law enforcement. On page one she is shot twice and grievously injured. Her heart stops on the operating table and it takes three jolts of electricity to restart it.

By page five she is walking every day, pushing herself to take five more steps than yesterday. She has a spreadsheet. She records the steps, and how long it took, and what she ate, and how much less she slept.

I find myself feeling sorry for her.

She has such a performance mindset that she has no time to simply be grateful she is still alive. No time to recuperate. No time for a reset, even though technically she died and was brought back.

Rest is not what you do. It is what you stop doing.

Life is not a test you are failing by being tired.

You are allowed to lay a big thing down. You are allowed to smell the roses, and taste the coffee, and luxuriate in a warm bath.

When tiredness is something else

I want to be clear about the edge of what I'm saying.

If your fatigue has been going on a long time, if it comes from illness or grief or a body that is genuinely struggling, the point I am making here does not apply to your situation. That is a different kind of tiredness and it deserves its own care and its own conversation.

And if the tiredness is there when you wake up, and rest never seems to touch it, that is worth its own look. I wrote about that one in why am I so tired all the time.

If you are worried or concerned, it might be helpful to check with your doctor. Worry and concern add their own weight to the mix.

Getting reassurance that all is well can be a real gift to yourself.

What I am talking about here is the ordinary heaviness at the end of a full day, and the story we have been trained to tell about it.

You get to decide what your tiredness means

The candle in the window of your true home, what I like to call your inner flame, does not go out because you are tired.

It burns while you rest. It restores you while you rest.

You can hand your tiredness to the culturally installed aging default story, or you can let it be the inhale before the next full breath of your life.

I am learning to be much less driven by fear. I am embracing the opportunities to love. Yesterday, instead of fear, I let my heavy body be a body that had received a great deal and needed to replenish.

I had a nap. I let the light do its quiet work.

You are not running down.

You are receiving.

You are not running down. You are receiving.

Kristin Milan

Coach and author for women in the third act of life, holding faith and consciousness in the same hand. Master's in Social Work, degree in Psychology, HeartMath trained, and nearly five decades engaged with the science of change. She writes about outgrowing the aging default and coming home to a wholeness you already belong to. Meet Kristin