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Feb 22 - Tiredness In The 21st Century

By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga

I like to think about the Middle Ages a lot. If I had a time machine it's probably the furthest back I'd go, anything beyond that is boring. It just feels like it was a pretty chill time; everybody was dumb, nobody had an education, and the less you know, right? When I think about the Middle Ages (which is like a few times a week, probably thanks to Medieval Reactions on Facebook) I think about two scenarios: dudes in a field with arrows through their chest and head, and dudes playing the flute in a courtyard in a castle. I'm more of a second scenario kinda guy, if ya know what I mean. But I'll take another scenario I've thought about, that could also be appealing, and that is being part of the regular folk loving life in the village.

Of course the appeal of all these situations and the Middle Ages comes from seeing them lounging about and having fun in paintings. Which is also true of the renaissance, another time period I wouldn't mind going to. And I'm comparing these loungers to the people of today, my peers, my colleagues, myself. We're stressed, unhappy, balding, lost and most of all, tired. We go from coffee to coffee, perking ourselves up for short spaces of time, like jumping on stepping stones to get to the other side of the river, our beds at night. So I think of playing “Greensleeves” on the flute, in green tights, with funny shoes on, in some weird medieval band type thing and then going down the pub at night and just living this super relaxing life. But there more I've been thinking about it the more I've realised how it most probably was nothing like that.

Every time I say I'm tired I'll have someone older tell me how in their day they would be full of all this crazy energy and would do so much, and it got me thinking about physical activity and tiredness throughout history. I started thinking about millions of years ago. You know, cavemen. I really have no idea what the world looked like because when you see illustrations of cavemen you never seen them in like a forest. But I've seen documentaries about tribespeople in the Amazon today and I can imagine we were probably like that the past. And these people work, man! They go out in the morning, all the guys, and they look for monkeys and snakes and stuff and they kill them and take them back to the camp. And there'll be times, I'm guessing, where they just go down to road, or dirt path, and find a pig and grab it and that's their day sorted. So they can just relax. But there'll be days where bigger animals are after them, and that's how it probably was for us when we were cavemen. Tough and tiring!

Then I think about the Egyptians and of when they had to build pyramids, and when the Romans had to build roads and buildings and whole cities, and even the people that built all these huge cathedrals we still have around, and take for granted. And all that before we even had any machinery at all. But even after that came about people started working in factories, and big construction projects. We even, with time, started building skyscrapers. I'm sure you've see those photos of the builders of skyscrapers in New York City just sat on the beams, up in the air, no harness, no nothing. Hard work. And all these people in all these years of history probably worked the whole week through and still had time to naked mud wrestle (because that's what tough people do, I'm told).

Then machines got better, and we got cars, and we got motorcycles, and excellent public transport and computers, and the internet so we don't have to go places to go places, and we arrived at today, 2017. I'm writing this in bed, at a time when I probably shouldn't be writing, staring at a screen, and worried and stressing out that I'll be tired in the morning. My eyes are stingy and I'm thinking about how I'm tired but looking back at my day I've realised I haven't done anything. I woke up an hour before I had to be at work, walked a total of five minutes maximum from the front door of home to my desk, and pretty much sat there until I left at five, for another five minute walk followed by three or four hours of writing and browsing the web. And I'm tired. I could spend all day in bed and be tired. And I know I'm not the only one, we're all the same, our days consist of sitting in front of screens and lying on sofas and beds, and yet we're probably more tired than all those people who worked really hard all day and all their lives.

But why is that? Why are we the generation that is always tired? Why are we the generation that gets angry when we have to do just a little more than what's asked of us? I really think we're not tired as much as we want to seem like we're tired. Sure, times have changed and more of us are using our brains more rather than our hands; we're no longer as physically fit as we used to be. And even those who boast of being in great shape and really fit are still yawning on the way to work like the rest of us. But surely it's all an illusion of tiredness, we can't have just evolved to, within one generation, become these fragile creatures that can't handle sitting in a chair for eight hours and then doing something else after. Half of us don't even have the energy to exercise outdoors, we walk and cycle indoors now. It's all insane, so as I think of lounging in my green tights and funny shoes - probably working more than just nine to five for some slave-driver king - once I manage to get my hands on a time machine, I worry about one thing more than anything, and that is how tired it'll make me to travel all that time.

Stefano Blanca is a writer, artist, photographer and musician living and working in Gibraltar

Email me at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


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