Scott Edgar (00:01.176)
Welcome back to The Poet Delayed. My name is Scott and I am the host. I'm talking in this episode about something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. It comes from a line that's attributed to Nietzsche. And actually, I don't even know that Nietzsche really said it. I haven't been able to actually find the source of it, but when I read it, it was attributed to him. So we're just going to say this is a Nietzsche line. It sounds very Nietzsche at least. He wrote,

or somebody wrote and attributed to Nietzsche, when we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

Since I read that, I've thought about that a lot and it keeps recurring back to me because I've seen it happen in my lifetime and time again. There are times certainly when I feel clear, steady, and I feel capable. And then there are seasons when I feel tired, whether it's physically tired, emotionally worn down, psychologically overloaded. I'm just tired. And I've noticed that in those seasons that things that I'd already moved beyond, things that I feel like I had already conquered, they begin to return.

whether it's old fears or old patterns, whether it's old attachments.

or old ways of abandoning myself. That's a good broad category. But it's happened enough in my life that I don't ignore it anymore. I've started to notice that fatigue changes perception of reality. And if I forget that, it's easy for me to mistake tiredness for truth. I've got a poem that I wrote.

Scott Edgar (01:41.11)
of a few favorite poems, and this is one of them. It's titled Forgotten Walls. It reads, Clarity comes and the walls reveal themselves tall strong and immovable in the haze and fog which is his daily walk their existence is blurred They are forgotten though. He was there when they were built and even added stones Now in clarity he looks to bring them down stone by stone

And so he works relentlessly with pick and hammer, as his salty sweat stings his eyes and his muscles and mind fatigue. Yet his only yield from the Sisyphean task is bloodied palms and frustration, while the stones remain one upon the other. Then slowly and imperceptibly, under cover of his exhausted heart and mind, the fog seeps

back again and hides the stony barricade. That poem came from a pattern I knew for years. Every now and then clarity would come, not necessarily even earned, just it would passively come. It would just arrive and suddenly I could see the walls around me, the walls that were limiting me, the walls of fear, avoidance, old stories, the walls of habits that kept me small and I saw them clearly.

And once I saw them, I thought, OK, I want to tear these down. I wanted to tear them down immediately. I wanted freedom right then. And so I got to work trying to figure out how to change it, trying to figure out how to tear the walls down.

The is, it's exhausting work, especially when you're not used to doing it. And so, invariably, I would get tired. And when I got tired, it'd slow down, and then the fog would come back, the walls would disappear again. And what felt obvious yesterday, what seemed clear yesterday, felt invisible again, and I didn't see it, and I shrunk back into my limitations.

Scott Edgar (03:47.244)
And I guess that poem kind of writing that poem taught me that, you know, sometimes the prisons we are, we are in, aren't necessarily rebuilt. Sometimes they're just forgotten and we just kind of, for me at least, just kind of shrink down. And I've often felt as I think about that, like King Theoden and the Lord of the Rings, you know, he wasn't destroyed. Theoden was not destroyed. He was not powerless. He was just diminished and clouded. He was listening to the

too long to the wrong voice. If you recall in that story, he had a counselor next to his throne named Wormtongue. Wormtongue is such a powerful image because he doesn't overpower the king. Instead, he clouds the king. He narrows the king's sight. He makes weakness feel final. He makes burden feel permanent. And Gandalf diagnoses this. He says to Theoden, too long have you sat in shadows entrusted to twisted tales and crooked prom-

Scott Edgar (04:49.646)
Theoden didn't need more power. He had all the power he needed in him. What he needed was clearer sight. And I find that for me, that's often true. When I'm overwhelmed, I don't always need more strength. What I need is the fog to lift. It's usually not a capacity problem that I'm facing. It's usually a perception problem.

And I wrote about this in a poem titled, She is Steady and She Waits, about the perception issue. it kind of, I didn't make the connection between Theoden and this poem until I was preparing this podcast. But here's what I wrote. And again, this poem is titled, She is Steady and She Waits. It reads, truth circles at a distance when the deceiver dreams its dreams next to you in the night.

and fills your ears with whispered words to cloud your heart in the day. She circles and is ready, though invisible to your lowered eyes and silent to your selective ears. Yet she waits. Truth always waits. She will not depart, though the mountains do. She is there and she waits for you to go to her. She will not come to you. But she is steady and she waits.

So this poem is about the permanence of truth. Truth doesn't shout over noise. It doesn't panic. It doesn't beg for attention. It simply remains. It's steady. It remains waiting. And I'm learning that when I feel confused or diminished, truth hasn't left me. Instead I've drifted from it. And I think that, you know, recovery isn't creating truth. It's returning to it. And it's truth about any tru. And when I talk about truth here,

I'm specifically referencing truth about me, who I am, what I am capable of. Truth about the walls that surround me. Truth about what's limiting me. Because that's what bogs me down when I start believing untruths about me or when I start believing or when I allow my mind to be clouded. that's the problem with fatigue.

Scott Edgar (07:09.464)
And that's why fatigue matters because it narrows consciousness and it shortens the horizon and it makes temporary feelings seem permanent. That's a problem that I...

encounter all the time or it makes solvable things feel impossible and it makes me forget who I am as I was saying makes me forget what I know what I've survived it makes me forget what resources I have it makes me forget that people love me it makes me forget that I can ask for help makes me forget that I can call people when I'm overwhelmed or overloaded

And the forgetting matters because my experience has been that despair fills the void left by my forgetting. When I forget all of those things, despair shoots in and despair is exhausting.

And here's my experience is that when I'm tired and I feel despair, I try to find relief.

And that's a human thing to do. But the problem that I've encountered is that not all relief is positive relief. There is relief that can cost us depending on what we reach for. There are times when we want to check out. And I say we, and I guess I should probably say me. There's times when I want to check out. I want to numb, scroll, avoid. Just kick it to the next day, not deal with it now.

Scott Edgar (08:42.09)
And sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. I think that those things can be beneficial if we are not disconnected from truth.

And another way is abdicating to systems. Sometimes we want something else to decide for us, whether it's a group, an ideology, rigid identity, anything that says, come here, stop wrestling, we'll tell you who you are. We'll tell you what to think. Now I understand that appeal.

because I grew up overwhelmed as a child. Just the nature of my childhood was overwhelming to me. And so I chose, for me, it was religion. was tell me who to be, tell me what to do, just give it to me and I'll try to do it. And I abdicated my will, I abdicated my person, who I am to these religious tenets.

And one of my favorite lines, Victor Hugo warned about this in Les Miserables. He wrote, it does not do to let the senses fall asleep, whether in the shade of a sacred tree or in the shadow of an army. I love that.

And sometimes...

Scott Edgar (10:09.57)
we abdicate or rather we lose ourselves through apparent virtue. Sometimes we lose ourselves through vice. I mean, I think that's understandable. Sometimes we, you know, whether through drugs or alcohol or other vices, we can lose ourselves. We can abdicate who we are or our wills. But what I've noticed is other times we can lose ourselves through apparent virtue, whether that be through endless giving, through...

trying to be needed, to try to earn love through depletion, through disappearing in the name of goodness.

But my experience is that that just leads us to be self-sacrificed, savior to none, as I wrote in my poem, Motherless Pieta. And that's what I struggled with a lot, growing up, even now I struggle with it, people-pleasing, self-sacrificing myself, and not really benefiting anybody because I lose myself in the process. I think...

Probably for me, I were to list maybe...

The scariest form of abdication, I think it would be abdication to hopelessness. Because sometimes the surrender is quieter, it's not to pleasure or ideology. It's just despair. Life is too much and I can't do this anymore. I don't care anymore. Let whatever happens to me happen to me.

Scott Edgar (11:43.298)
That's a form of abdication too. And that is one that can...

Scott Edgar (11:54.86)
result in.

Scott Edgar (12:05.109)
self abandonment.

where there's no coming back from it.

Scott Edgar (12:13.806)
So what is the cost of all of when we abdicate our wills, when we abdicate and abandon ourselves? Why does it matter?

Surrender often works for a moment when we surrender or abdicate and that's why it's tempting. If I feel numb, I feel less pain. If I give up, I feel less pressure. If I let others decide, I feel less burden. If I disappear, I feel less conflict. There can be real temporary relief for sure. But for me, there has usually been a cost, which is the cost of clarity, the cost of dignity, the cost of self-respect.

the cost of becoming smaller, the cost of slowly forgetting who I am. And it's usually not through catastrophe, it's usually just through a slow erosion.

Scott Edgar (13:04.322)
So I've really been trying to work through this and I don't have formulas, but I do have some practices that I'm implementing in my life to try to work through these moments. These moments when I am tired.

Marcus Aurelius warned against imagining our whole life at once. And I love that. What I've trying to do more now is when life feels overwhelming, I try not to solve my whole life. try to shrink the field to this hour, like one call, one honest action. The sentence that I use when the fog comes, the sentence that I say to myself is, I can't solve my life today.

but I can act with integrity in this hour. And that shrinks everything because I can't solve it. Not everything is due right now. I can't solve everything right now. So when I'm tired and everything is pressing down on me, just to say out loud, I can't solve my life today, and then remind myself, but I can act with integrity in this hour.

And what does integrity look like? I think it's what do I need? Do I need a drink of water? Do I need to go for a walk? Do I need to open up a file that I've been afraid to look at? Is there something that I've been putting off for a long time? Can I just sit down and can I just look at it for five minutes? Just some form of integrity that moves me forward.

Scott Edgar (14:37.41)
And in addition to that, this, this next one is still hard for me because I grew up feeling like asking for help meant weakness more, more than weakness. It, it, it made me feel like I was a burden and I was scared of being a burden.

So when life gets heavy now, I'm trying to remember that I can reach out, because it's easy for me to forget. Or even when I remember to reach out, it's scary to do so. But I can call a friend, and I can ask questions, and I can let someone else help me carry the load. And so sometimes strength looks like asking. And what I found out is I have friends and family who love me. And

I'm not asking them to fix my life. And I think that's the key for me is to realize that, listen, I know you can't save me. I know you can't fix my life. But I just need somebody to sit with me. And understanding that and realizing that I'm not asking these people to fix my life, I'm just asking for presence.

That makes it easier and less heavy to reach out and ask for help. then when there's a positive response to that, just encourages me to ask more and to reach out when I feel like I am overwhelmed, when I am overly tired.

Scott Edgar (16:10.008)
Another thing is to distinguish exhaustion from truth, because not every thought I have while depleted, while I'm tired, is wisdom. Not every feeling is revelation. Exhaustion often feels urgent, but wisdom feels steady. So remembering that when I'm tired,

Scott Edgar (16:31.426)
the thoughts that I'm having, the parade of horribles that are marching through my head, especially in the middle of the night, just to remember that that's not the truth necessarily.

And then learning to like use my body to come back into myself, just little things. This kind of goes back to what can I do in this hour? You know, walk, drink some water, get good sleep, sunlight, breathe. You know, I'm learning just simple things, learning to control our breath signals to our nervous system that we're safe. That low breathing, that quick low breathing is physiologically saying, Hey,

There's a threat here, but if we can calm our breathing down and take a deep breath in and breathe out a little longer than we breathe in, then that signals to our nervous system that you're safe. There's no threat here. Cause sometimes it's not the mind, the mind isn't broken. In fact, I don't know that the mind ever is broken. I think it just gets flooded. And I think it's important to remember prior victories. Fatigue creates forgetting. And so I need to remember myself, write things down that I can return to like when I'm in my right mind, when I'm not tired.

make a list of things that I can recall when I'm struggling.

things that I've survived, remembering that, problems that I've solved, things that I've endured, people who love me, people who can reach out.

Scott Edgar (18:01.506)
And I think it's important too that.

Scott Edgar (18:06.77)
remember that when we are fatigued that well the problem that I have is when I get my body gets tired and exhausted and then my mind follows and that's and that's or I'm mentally tired but I wrote about in one of my poems called terrible potential I wrote about this kind of pattern of getting exhausted and then just giving up and effectively just rolling over the poem is titled

terrible potential and I've referenced it quite a bit but because I love this poem I'm going to read it. I'm going read the whole thing. Again it's titled terrible potential and I think this is the pattern that I'm trying to follow in my life. It reads, it's autobiographical by the way, it reads, I see it now. For years I only sensed it or saw the dissipating dust tells of its approach.

but it filled me with terror and there was no cover or protection so I ran as fast as my child's stride could take me, not even knowing what it was, only that it was coming. But that made the fear so much more in my little mind so I ran harder until I forgot why I was running, only knowing that I couldn't stop. But I see it now. Its shape is fluid and undefined and its terrible potential fills my mind. I want to keep running, retreating,

But it won't stop and it's closing the gap and it's more terrible than I ever thought. But it's real. I see it now and I know there's no escape. There never was. But I want to keep running anyway until it overtakes me. I won't see it coming. It will just happen and be done. But my insufficient legs refuse to carry me anymore. So I prostrate myself as an offering. I know you're coming, I whisper.

and I offer myself willingly. This is not defeat I reassure myself. Then lower my eyes and brace for its fury.

Scott Edgar (20:17.282)
But my mind keeps moving defiantly. It knows truths that my body forgot and reminds me. You were born with claws and they're with you still. And I remember and feel them. They're deep, but I feel them and they're there. So I raise my body from the dirt and my eyes to the distance. It is closer now. The gap is disappearing, but not my fear. My fear is growing.

broadcast loudly by my beating heart. But I no longer want to run, nor offer myself willingly. Instead, I watch it come, and I wait, and fear true, but I wait to receive it, and I steady myself. I have claws, and I feel them, and I will meet it face to face. I have terrible potential too. I feel it now.

Scott Edgar (21:15.832)
When that poem, my body was done, legs were tired, fear was loud. But my mind remembered something true. It said, you were born with claws and they're with you still. That's the truth that sits with me. And that's true of all of us. And I get that line from Nietzsche actually, and thus spoke Zarathustra. You were born with claws.

Like the truth is I have the capacity, I have the capability to be successful, but when I get tired, I forget. When I get tired, I get scared.

My mind gets clouded. But the truth is that I have the clause and I just need to remember that. And my mind can remind me of that. And that's why I write things down. But exhaustion hides our strength sometimes. But like I said, it can't erase it. fatigue can cloud memory, but it can't change our nature. And as I said earlier, truth is steady.

and she waits even when I lose sight of it, even when I lose sight of myself. So I may feel weak, but that doesn't always mean I am weak.

The truth is I do have claws. There's still nights and days when old, conquered ideas return.

Scott Edgar (22:45.346)
Sometimes they come rushing in, sometimes they come softly. Sometimes they're very convincing that things are hopeless. And they ask for one small surrender, just give up. It's those moments that I try to remember that I may not need more power. I just may need a clearer sight. I may not need to solve everything. I may need just one honest hour. I may not need to carry it alone.

I may need to ask for help. And I'm always trying to remember these words. You were born with claws. They are with you still.

and that I have the capability and capacity.

steady myself and that it's okay if things don't turn out how I think they ideally should turn out. That's not the goal. The goal is to keep going, to keep moving forward. So when I'm tired I try to remember that, that I have claws, that I am capable.

Scott Edgar (23:59.704)
So this is a lesson that I have been learning. I thank you for listening. if you found this episode helpful or something in it that you felt you could use in your life, I would love it if you shared it with a friend, family, or whomever. And until next time, in the words of E.E. Cummings, may I be I is the only prayer. Thank you.