Bad Tired; Lessons from Harry Chapin and Harry Hogge

We talk often of the dangers of poor public policy decisions or political divisiveness. But today I want to talk about another danger. And that is the danger of being “bad tired.”

Bad tired is an idea I first heard decades ago on an old cassette tape while driving to high school. On it, Harry Chapin, the late great singer-songwriter, told this story.

“My grandfather was painter. He died at age 88. 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 was 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. He said, 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 can say ‘take me away’. He said Harry, all my life I’ve wanted to be a painter. And I painted. God, I would’ve loved to have been more successful. But I painted. And I painted. And I am good tired, and they can take me away.”

Many of us are currently bad tired, and many things have us living other people’s days. Sure, there is the normal pull of life – needing to earn a living or the responsibility of raising a family. But then we layered in the constant drumbeat of 24/7 news, social media with endless scrolls, and the sheer barrage of inputs that hit us every moment of every day. It feels like day three of a trip to Las Vegas when the excitement has long since given way to the sheer mental slogging that is the constant sound of slot machines. One looks forward to the relative quiet of the airplane ride home. I think we as a nation long for quiet.

And while I typically admire success rather than begrudge it, part of the bad tired, frankly, is seeing success find those that karma or a God or a just universe wouldn’t necessarily seek out to reward. Influencers lying around by a pool making hundreds of thousands while someone in medical school racks up hundreds of thousands in debt. Insiders cashing in on $400,000 bets on prediction markets while others eat the missiles that made the payday possible. Loud-mouth miscreants podcasting their ways into mansions. The founder of the biggest personal injury law firm in the country thinking it’s okay to have billboards depicting him on a private plane or on the beach while seeking to represent those who are suffering…or not. A president suing the very agencies he oversees for billions as if somehow he thinks that money would come not from the pockets of the American people he represents, but rather from the other political party. A president’s son-in-law replacing a Secretary of State and conveniently securing billions for his own business while negotiating on “our” behalf.

It seems more than ever, hard work isn’t the answer. Shortcuts are. It seems truth is irrelevant. It seems now is the time for narcissism and a psychopathic level of non-caring. Now is the time for getting ahead by stepping upon. I’d like to imagine all these folks will feel a bit bad tired at some point too. Living that way, succeeding that way, has to take a toll. Doesn’t it? And I’d like to think that while karma is most certainly a procrastinator, she will eventually buckle down and do her job.

Speaking of jobs, what one does for a living matters. The closer that occupation comes to also being a person’s passion, like with Harry’s grandfather the painter, the less bad tired one will be. The Desiderata, written by Max Ehrmann, is my favorite prose poem. Though written in 1927 everything on it still holds true. But one line is about to not hold true. That is this one, “Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it’s a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.” Max didn’t know AI was going to come for all our careers. That is a legitimate fear. And fear is tiring.

Beyond all this, our good tired is being deliberately denied and our bad tired deliberately exacerbated by those who lie to fire us up to their way of thinking, engage in hyperbole that raises our anxiety levels, and divide us to serve their specific end. But their means, beyond depleting our energies, risk blowing the whole damn thing up.

There is a great scene in the race car driving movie, Days of Thunder. A grizzled crew chief played by Robert Duvall says to his driver played by Tom Cruise, “You pegged the engine in Atlanta. Redlined the son ‘a bitch and blew it sky high. Done it deliberate…done it deliberate. 9,400 RPMs according to the little telltale button.” Many of our leaders are redlining our world, and just like an engine has a breaking point so too does the fragile world order. And make no mistake, they done it deliberate.

You can’t always tell who is operating in our best interest and who isn’t. Public policy is complicated, and all news sources have a bent. Often the easiest way to decide to whom to give the benefit of the doubt, and to whom not, is to look at with whom that person surrounds himself. That’s why my parents would caution us when we were young about never being guilty by association. I wouldn’t want to be associated with Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, or Kristi Noem to name just a few.

So who is our administration’s idea of a friend? Recently, Vice President JD Vance traveled at our taxpayer expense to Hungary to campaign for Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban is an autocrat who has weakened the judiciary, clamped down on free press, gone after academia, rails against the dilutive dangers of immigration, and leans away from alliance with his fellow EU countries. He supports Vladimir Putin, not Ukraine, and his administration has been accused of wide-spread corruption financially benefiting his allies. Does any of that playbook sound familiar? There is only one thing it seems the Trump administration hasn’t learned from Viktor Orban. And that is when Orban was defeated last week, he accepted the election results even though he didn’t like them.

I think there is an even better way to judge a person than by who his friends are. You can learn even more about him by who his enemies or critics are. I’m hearing in this moment the song lyric from U2’s Cedars of Lebanon,

“Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you

Make them interesting ‘cause in some ways they will mind you

They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends

Gonna last with you longer than your friends.”

So who is our administration’s idea of an enemy? Well, this past week it was the Pope. And not just a pope, but the first one from America. President Trump went after Pope Leo in a post that would make you believe he had to run against him in 2028. Leo is “WEAK on crime.” Leo thinks it’s “OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon!” President Trump then went on to take credit for Leo being selected Pope, saying Leo “should be thankful.” And then for the chef’s kiss, the President again claimed he himself was elected “IN A LANDSLIDE.” His capital letters. Fact checking this president is a career, and one I don’t want, but it is healthy to remember that 50.2% of Americans voted for someone else. And his delusional belief to the contrary enables reckless and lopsided decision making.

Some would say the Pope-post isn’t a big deal. Okay, then what of the President’s Easter Sunday post that threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran, saying innocent civilians would be “living in Hell.” The post ended with a signoff that mocked an entire people’s religion. That’s a president tanking our credibility, ceding our moral high ground, and compromising our future safety by both normalizing civilian attack and further inflaming those who would engage in Islamic extremism. Or how about the President’s post last Sunday, now seemingly deleted, depicting himself as a Christ-like figure? Properly questioned about this post, the President claimed he thought the image portrayed him as a doctor. My bad, I guess it's okay to claim to be something you never went to school for or were certified to be. At best he cannot be taken seriously and at worst it demonstrates an incapacity to discharge the duties of his office. Lack of credibility is incapacity.

Some on the right, including the President, are quick to identify Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) or a lack of sense of humor. I’ve spoken in this space before about how much I dislike someone bemoaning a circumstance without recognizing the role he may have played in creating that circumstance. Perhaps TDS would more aptly be described as fatigue at the unnecessary. And lack of a sense of humor more aptly a recognition that the most powerful man in the world has an obligation toward solemnity.

A friend said to me recently that she no longer watches the news. She has disengaged from it to save her energy for the things she can control. Understandable, it’s her way to get back to being good tired. But what if we all disengage while those who stay engaged deliberately redline America’s engines? What then?

Engagement has to be the answer. And it has to be an engagement that doesn’t buy into dangerous hyperbole, condemns behavior beneath an office, chooses great character over manageable policy differences, and gives more grace to one’s own neighbors than to a politician one knows just from television. This nation should not be defined by a President Donald Trump on the one side or a Senator Adam Schiff on the other. Both are tiring in the bad way. And at some point, degrees of difference don’t matter. Tiring is tiring.

It is time for us to find good tired again. A day not encroached upon by our leaders. A day well lived, even if not successful. A day more about the process than the outcome. A cavalcade of these days that, when strung together into a life, may allow one to rightly say, “I am good tired and they can take me away.” I can’t speak to what gets you to that feeling personally. But nationally, I believe it begins by us choosing leaders of character and refusing to regurgitate the things said by those who lack it.