This is how we exhaust ourselves and wake up stronger.
How do we summon the energy to do the thing when our heart isn't in it?
Maybe this is the fulcrum of exhaustion.
I want to write that the heart has an endless supply of energy, but I know that's not quite right.
We feel Invincible when our hearts are on fire. We can summon the energy to move mountains and never sleep, to lift up loved ones and stomach grief, but if the heart runs out we can't blink, every step is excruciating.
While the heart may run out of energy sometimes, it never quits, it's quick to recover. Even when we exhaust every ounce of physical and mental energy, even when we exhaust all possibility, even when the heart is exhausted, the heart will endure.
Why is that, and how do we sustain the energy? How do we embrace the exhaustion to keep the heart involved?
We cross the border between good exhaustion and bad by way of belief and hope. The heart survives on belief and produces hope. As long as we can sustain a belief in what we feel and how we move in this world, the heart endures.
The hard work is where we find a belief, it’s how we feed the passion of the heart. The habit of good exhaustion, the practice of grinding through those moments when the body and mind want to collapse, this is how we build strength of heart, and how we reinforce belief.
How good does it feel, how content is your heart, when you're exhausted, when you've exhausted the mind and body, when you know you've given everything you could to the day, to a loved one, to yourself?
This is how we exhaust ourselves and wake up stronger.
When we are feeling disconnected from body and mind and each other and our passions, when the heart is not driving us forward, we’ve crossed the boundary, we are in dangerous, exhausted territory. This is when we need to hit pause and let the heart recover. And it will recover as long we maintain a belief in the heart.
As long as a belief exists, we can relax and recover, and know the heart will tell us when the time has come to get moving again.