Exhaustion and Exhilaration · 14 June 2025
Exhaustion and exhilaration are not mutually exclusive, especially when you are doing something you love.
We recently finished the 2025 Track and Field (T&F) season, and what a season it was. We finished second in our classification in our state! For the second year in a row! It was quite exhilarating, to say the least.
And it was exhausting. Quite the slog. Which means that there is a bit of relief that it is over. And yet… And yet I can hardly wait until it all starts again in nine or so months.
I know that sounds strange, but it really is not. One of my fellow coaches and I were talking about it. Michael said, “It is exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. And nobody gets that but other coaches.” He was driving us home from a meet, but I think I still just nodded. I was too exhausted to say anything.
(By the way, I was not talking to myself. In fact, if you meet a man of a certain age, you can guess that his name is Michael and you will be right about 50% of the time. Okay, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Try it and see. Next time you meet a man over about 40 years old, guess that his name is Michael. You have a good chance of being right. But that is another story.)
At any rate.
There are probably other people besides coaches who understand the notion that exhilaration and exhaustion are not mutually exclusive. Athletes for one. They can be exhausted at the end of a meet, but be exhilarated because they won or because they got a personal record or just because they have so much endorphins flowing through their bodies.
I think that people who love their jobs can feel it too. They understand that even though they are going home exhausted, they accomplished something great. So they are exhilarated and ready to get after it again the next day.
In my own case, I love my job as a teacher and coach. I am not necessarily exhilarated at the end of each day, but I am at the end of each season and the end of each year. I am exhilarated because I know that some of my students and athletes accomplished something that they may not have thought they could. Somebody in the classroom or on the track or on the field did something amazing. I am exhilarated because each of them is exhilarated. And that exhilaration gives me energy to start it all over again next year and next season. Even though the effort to get there was exhausting.
We all know that to accomplish anything worthwhile, we need to put in the effort. We need to invest our energy and ourselves into the great endeavor. We need to pour ourselves into what we are doing. And in the case of teachers and coaches, that means that we need to pour ourselves into our students and athletes. Which is exhausting. The mental and emotional energy stresses and strains our beings even though the rewards are exhilarating.
I know that not everything I do is both exhilarating and exhausting, but the endeavors that are are worth it. Teaching and coaching and even writing exhaust me, but they exhilarate me as well. Which is why I keep coming back. It is why I keep working with students and athletes. It is why I keep writing. I feel the exhaustion to the very depths of my soul, but I just recharge and get ready to come back for more. For I know that with the exhaustion comes exhilaration.
I hope that everybody has some endeavor that takes all of their energy and gives them exhilaration. I hope that everybody can someday understand that exhaustion and exhilaration are not mutually exclusive.
© 2025 Michael T. Miyoshi
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