As I opened my “on this day” on Facebook this morning the first thing that came up was a quote that I shared during this time last year. It read:
“I’m tired of people romanticizing overexertion. Exhausted is not the new chic, coffee (though a delicious necessity) is not a food group, and running on fumes is not admirable. Why do we hold pedestals for sleepless nights, breakdowns, and inner turmoil? Are those really things to aspire to? Self-care. Balance. The ability to know when your body, mind, and spirit need to take a step back. Those are things we should admire. We have to stop blurring the line between ‘commitment’ and self-endangerment because too many people are burning out before they have a chance to truly shine.”
Just as it did last year when I read it… It hit a nerve. All of the things were things that we as college students brag about on a daily basis. But why? We aren’t in a competition for who is the most exhausted, for who has spent more hours up or who drank more coffee within the last 24 hours. None of it matters. We should be encouraging one another to get sleep, to relax, to do something that we love, anything but over exerting ourselves on a daily basis. We should be seeking self-care, balance, self-love and health for ourselves. We only get one body and one mind, we should seek to take care of those two precious things. Life is short and shouldn’t be spent bragging over our exhaustion or how our lives are failing at that point but instead we should be bragging about the ways we take care of ourselves. Stop endangering yourself for the sake of impressing people with your ability to push your body to its breaking point.