The two meanings of exhaustion

I wrote before about the two meanings of competition.

I’ve also noticed two distinct feelings of exhaustion.

I think most people think of the exhaustion as something they don’t like, like at the end of a long day of work they didn’t want to do or didn’t enjoy.

Another is similar, but I think distinct because we like the feeling so much. The second exhaustion comes from doing something we love, like exercising, until we can’t do it anymore—that is, to exhaustion. I love that feeling. Feeling spent. I think everyone does, or at least everyone who pushes themselves to it.

I suspect more people are familiar with the first feeling and they don’t like it. Since they don’t like it I think they avoid the second kind, depriving themselves of one of life’s great feelings.

Vince Lombardi mentioned it in his closing to “What it takes to be number one”

But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour—his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear—is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle—victorious.