To say, "I'm tired"

Sit down next to any high-schooler and within a minute, one of you will inevitably say, “I’m tired.” It’s become a reflex.

Adolescents are constantly sleep-deprived; I think we all know that. So why do people keep saying it?

Let’s look at what this phrase really means.

I think the first option is pretty obvious: It’s a filler phrase. When people (and this is not limited to teenagers) talk, they tend not to have very much to discuss. This is where that trope of chatting about the weather comes from. Face it: People tend to live boring lives and they can’t think about anything else to say.

So high-schoolers tend to say it because being tired is that one constant in their lives. They don’t need to come up with any discussion topic or think hard about what to say. They’re always tired, so it’s something they can default to. And it’s relatable, so they don’t need to worry about how the other person is going to respond. 99% of the time, it will be a “me too”.

As they become senior students, this phrase changes. Seniors default to talking about their post-secondary plans. This, too, is easy: Everyone is thinking about this in some way or another, so you’re definitely going to get a response.

In a broader sense, some adolescents probably don’t literally mean that they’re tired. Sure, they’re sleep-deprived, but they have been for so long that they’ve become used to it. Instead, probably a good portion of students mean that they’re simply tired of, well, life.

Tired of schoolwork, jobs, expectations, pressure… The list goes on. Many students are facing so much stress that they’re tired of it all. Even when they’ve got free time to do whatever they want, they’ll still choose to think about school. They’ll spend that time studying or doing extra schoolwork. There is no such thing as relaxation in high school.

Even when students don’t have any homework, they feel like something is wrong. They’re just so used to having work that the absence of it feels incorrect, somehow.

When the phrase “I’m tired” is the most widely-used sentence in high school, something has gone wrong. These students are still children. They should not be facing so much duress.

And I suppose the working world is no different. Somehow we’ve created a society where people willingly put themselves up to be unhappy. It is funny, almost, how we will deprive ourselves of enjoyment in order to reach an impossible success.

It is funny how we will readily sacrifice our own happiness for the goal of attaining happiness.