John R. Miles
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The exhaustion that doesn't match how much we've done.
Because we're not just living the day.
We're living the day plus the weight of what we're still carrying.
And here's the part that's hardest to admit.
We get used to it.
We adapt.
We tell ourselves, this is just what adulthood feels like.
We call it maturity.
We call it responsibility.
We call it being realistic.
But it's not maturity.
It's adaptation to a smaller version of life.
And over time, that smaller version becomes the only one that we know how to live.
The dreams we once had quietly shrink to fit the space we've left them.
Joy starts to feel indulgent.
Tenderness gets rationed.
We become efficient at surviving the life we're carrying, but less and less skilled at truly living it.
And the worst part, none of this announces itself.
There's no crisis moment, no single day when everything collapses.
Just a slow, steady thinning, like a riverbed that gradually erodes until the water barely moves.