Since November, I’ve been hearing the same refrain whispered like a tired prayer: “I’m exhausted.” “I can’t wait for December so I can disappear.” “It’s been a hard year.”

Some people have already shut down. The doors are closed. The lights are dimmed. They will only awaken again somewhere around 12 January, blinking at the world like owls dragged into daylight. And then they’ll need another two weeks to remember how to move, how to work, how to care. If we are honest, the year only truly begins on 1 February.

A cynical soul might say some have been sleepwalking through their lives for much longer … marking time until they’re called home forever. A quiet, ghostly waiting.

What’s going on here?
What is the difference between being alive on 6 December and being alive on 1 February?
Nothing physical has changed. The sun rises, the clock ticks, the blood moves through our veins just the same. And yet something — something unseen — has dimmed.

What’s going on here? I mean, what’s different between being alive on 6 December and 1 February? Nothing has physically changed.

Let’s do a thought experiment. What if someone stuck a gun to my head: The hammer falls. The shot jams. I live.

Do you think I’d speak of tiredness? Hell no! I would be inspired to make the most of my second chance. I’d be doing things that are important.

I would taste air as if it were a feast.
I would hold my child for the longest time with arms that trembled from gratitude.
I would dig through old address books like treasure maps, hunting for the friends I had lost to time and carelessness.
I would mend what had fractured.
I would cast my petty grievances into the wind.
I would catch more bass.
I would play more chess.
I would write with ink still warm from the heart.
I would love as if love were a rare and vanishing animal.

So perhaps “tired” is a ghost word. A convenient cloak. A perception.

This world — our world — is built out of perception: heaven or hell, city or prison, all constructed in the theatre of the mind.

I would argue that we are not exhausted.
We are simply uninspired.

Because when we are inspired — truly inspired — we do not feel fatigue. We rise. We shine. We burn. We are alive.So being tired might just be an alarm bell warning us that we’re not inspired.

Do you remember what it felt like to be giddy with love? The world humming, colours bright, the future opening like a book?

How do we get back to that?
How do we fall in love again with this miraculous, improbable enterprise called our life?

If we can solve that, we will move from tired to inspired.
And inspiration is where we become who we were always meant to be: remarkable.

The question is simple, and it waits for each of us:

What would you do differently if tomorrow was a second chance?