You Are Not Cannon Fodder

If you seek a sign to find another way, to live life the way it was meant to be lived, to embrace the purpose and the gifts you have to offer, to welcome balance back into your life, to heal the brokenness, or to shed the stress and toxicity of your current state—this is it.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you are not cannon fodder. Not for your job, not for your family or friends, nor for any other persons or group of people who have any sort of claim to you.

Giving your all consistently and beyond the abilities of the average person drains the life energy from your very being. As does surrounding yourself with people who feed off of you, taking more than they can ever replenish, particularly in the psychological and emotional sense.

And now, let us make way for the grand entrance of the so-called cure who needs no formal introduction—a vacation. A vacation or a break is great, don’t get me wrong. But it does nothing to regenerate your energy when the front lines anxiously await your return—waiting for you to take up the banner you truthfully only slightly lowered for the abysmally short recuperation time available.

A vacation or break is not the answer—it is a bandage. Enough to staunch the flow but not enough to suture the wounds. Enough to keep going, time after time after time, but at a cost you do not fully appreciate until too much has been lost. You falter, stumble, and attempt to gather yourself. All to no avail.

What have you sacrificed so much of yourself for? You were not created to be over-burdened, psychologically taxed, surrounded by emotional leeches, or run to the point of exhaustion. You are worth more, deserve more. You are meant for more.

Say the quiet part out loud. There will always be another person. Someone to take up your place, heft the banner, and cycle through the motions—until they too make the same realization.

You are not expendable. The world needs your whole self, not a hollowed-out husk. Healing is not a privilege offered to a select few; it is open to all who seek its restorative powers. To heal yourself, you need to take yourself away. Away from people who cross boundaries again and again. Away from workplaces who remove ‘life’ out of work/life balance. Away from man-made distractions. Away from anyone and anything who does not restore you or bring you closer to peace.

The path you are on today is not the end all, be all.

The conclusion of a recent workday found me at home on the back patio, book in hand, cold drink nearby, plants tilting their leaves into the sunshine, and nothing but the sounds of windchimes and the chirping of birds to break the silence.

Peace. My heart and my soul elevated to the highest level of peace.

It has not always been this way. At one point, the concept of peace was a foreign word.

If you seek a sign to find another way, to live life the way it was meant to be lived, to embrace the purpose and the gifts you have to offer, to welcome balance back into your life, to heal the brokenness, or to shed the stress and toxicity of your current state—this is it.

You are not cannon fodder.

You are, however, made for this moment.