Good Tired-A Reflection on Harry Chapin’s Quote

I shared this reflection this morning with a group of Coastal Hospice staff. I hope you find it as meaningful as they did.

As I was driving home from work last night, I sighed and said out loud to myself in the car, “I am tired.” And I paused to reflect on what type of tired I was feeling…was I good tired or bad tired? 

Let me step back for a moment and explain. When I was a child, one of my favorite cassette tapes we listened to as a family was Harry Chapin’s Greatest Stories Live. My sister and I learned every word to every song on that tape. Harry Chapin’s best known song is Cats in the Cradle which he wrote and sang and many singers have covered that song throughout the years. To this day, he is my favorite singer and songwriter even though he died when I was young. 

In addition to writing many, many songs some of his albums also include quotes like this one.

“My grandfather was a painter. He died at age eighty-eight, he illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry, and he was looking at me and he said, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles; you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.
It’s that good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you don’t even have to tell yourself because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just and you say ‘take me away’”.”

And as I reflected on this quote and my day, I realized I was good tired. I have a job where I can utilize my gifts and talents. And this is my hope for you. I hope the work you do leaves you good tired knowing that you as part of the hospice and palliative care team are working with people at a difficult time in their lives and you can make it a little less difficult. What I love about this work is being part of a large team—most of whom I do not know the intricacies of your jobs, and what I do know is that each one of us is needed to ensure that we can promote dignity and quality of life for patients and families who face life-limiting conditions.

My hope is that the next time you are feeling tired at the end of the day you take a moment to determine if you are good tired or bad tired. If you find yourself bad tired, please consider how you can put more of yourself into your day. We need you and the gifts you bring. The world needs you and the love you have to share. And if you determine you are good tired, give thanks for a good day, “settle easy and sleep the sleep of the just.” 

Let us pray together-Holy One, Too often we find ourselves tired from work and life and responsibilities and so much more that fills our days. As you have made us all unique and full of different abilities, help us find ways to share ourselves with others so that at the end of day we can rest easy. Amen.