When You Are Too Tired to Care

I have sat in a lot of rooms with tired people.

For part of this last stretch of my life, I have done state-certified elder care. I have sat with people at the end of long lives, people who gave everything they had to family, to work, to a country that did not always give it back. I know what it looks like when a person has run out. I know the difference between someone who is resting and someone who is done.

So when a man I respect, older than me, told me plainly, "I just don't have the energy to care," I did not hear a complaint. I heard the truth. And I heard it from more than one person. People are not lazy. People are not checked out because they stopped loving their families or their neighbors. People are tired in a way that goes all the way to the bone.

If that is you right now, this page is for you. Not to ask you for anything. Just to say I see it.

You have been paying in your whole life. Into work. Into rent. Into a system that kept taking and rarely gave back. It is exhausting to be squeezed and told to smile. It is exhausting to watch the ground move down under your feet while someone tells you the numbers are fine. You are allowed to be tired. You earned that tiredness honestly.

So rest here for a minute. There is nothing on this page you have to do.

Here is the only thing I will say, because it is true and I would be lying if I left it out.

Doing nothing is not nothing. When we step back, the taking does not stop. It speeds up, because no one is in the way of it. Rest is fair. Quitting is not the same as rest. And a whole community stepping back at once is exactly what the people doing the taking are counting on.

I am not asking you to carry a movement. I am sharing with you that the fire comes back. It does not come back from a speech or a headline. It comes back small, at a kitchen table, working on one real thing with people you already know and already love. Your family. Your street. The people from your place of worship, your job, your block. That is where it returns. Seven Years of Change is built to work at exactly that size, close to home, with people you trust.

And here is the question I would ask you gently.

One day soon, someone you know is going to turn to you and ask what you think. They are going to ask for your mind, your read on things, your help deciding what to do. When that day comes, what will you say?

We need you for that. Not your money. Your mind. Every person, able-bodied or not, sharp of body or just sharp of thought, we need you. Some of the clearest minds I have ever met were sitting in a chair they could not get out of. Tired is welcome here. Worn down is welcome here. Sharp minds are wanted, in whatever body is carrying them.

Rest as long as you need to. When you are ready, even a little, we will be here, and so will the people who love you.

One more thing, because you have earned the truth.

Your tiredness is not confusion. If you feel like something is being broken that used to hold, you are not imagining it. Laws are being ignored. Contracts and treaties that people gave their word on are being torn up. Rules and traditions that protected ordinary people are being pushed aside, in plain sight, by people who are counting on the rest of us being too worn down to stand in the way. You are not too sensitive. You are seeing it clearly. That clear sight is exactly the thing we cannot afford to lose to exhaustion.

And hear me on this part, because it matters. None of this is instead of voting. Keep voting. Vote in every election you can, all the way down the ballot. The work I am talking about runs alongside your vote and protects it. It is the thing that makes your vote mean something when it is counted, and it is how we hold the ground between elections. One does not replace the other. We need both, and we need them at the same time.

That is why the small thing matters now, in a way it might not later. There are moments when a door is open and moments when it closes. Right now, ordinary people can still build something of their own. I do not believe that stays true forever. If we wait until we are rested and ready and the world is calm, the chance may be gone. We build now, tired, together, or we may not get to build at all.

So here is the smallest step there is.

The next time you are with someone you love, say one true sentence out loud: If we do not build something of our own now, in a few years the door to build it may be closed. Then stop talking, and listen to what they say back.

They may say they are tired too. That is not a wall. That is the beginning. Two people who love each other, agreeing out loud that they are tired and that something is wrong, have just done the first honest thing together. That is the kitchen table doing its work. That is the fire, catching.

You do not have to solve anything in that conversation. You only have to start it.

And when you want to see the whole thing laid out, calm and plain, with no one asking anything of you, what we are building will be right here. Food, housing, a way to get around, all of it fitting together. Look when you are ready. Not before.

Whenever you are ready, we are here.

If this is for you, write to us. The door is open.

— Seven Years of Change