The phone rang at 3:00 a.m., jerking me out of deep sleep.
It was 1998. I was living in Guatemala, in one of the very few apartments that even had a telephone. My companion and I both scrambled out of bed to answer.
On the other end of the line was our group leader. He needed help.
With urgency in his voice, he told us his briefcase was missing — and we needed to help him find it.
Still half-asleep — maybe even three-quarters — we got dressed in our work clothes and made our way to our car. No briefcase. We were about to drive 25 minutes across the city to the office when I suggested he double-check the back seat of his car — behind the driver’s seat on the floor — where he usually kept it.
He set the phone down, and for five minutes we waited.
I heard the slow scrape of the phone across the counter in his apartment when he picked it back up.
“It was in my car. Good night.”
No apology. No acknowledgment that maybe a 3:00 a.m. call for a lost briefcase was a bit much. At least before checking the usual spot.
To be fair, he was all-in on the work we were doing. He was the kind of leader who would give everything — including sleep, boundaries, and maybe just a touch of perspective — for the cause.
I love the man to this day. He became like a second father to me. He’ll be at my son’s wedding in a few weeks.
But that experience was 27 years ago, and the lesson has stuck.
One of the themes I keep encountering on this journey is that somewhere along the way, I absorbed the idea that being dependable meant being available. That loyalty meant readiness. It also meant rarely standing up for myself. That if something was urgent to someone else, it had to become urgent to me too.
That got me thinking about the difference between needing rest and needing boundaries. They often get mistaken for each other — and they often show up at the same time.
There’s no surprise why I’m physically tired all the time. I never sleep enough. But I’m also mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even spiritually tired. I blame most of it on work. Big projects, long hours, late-night emails. All of that plays a role. But it’s more than that.
The exhaustion isn’t just from effort. It’s from access.
It’s been decades since I gave myself permission to be unreachable. I’m the guy who replies to everything. I show up early and stay late. I say yes to things even when they don’t make sense, because I was afraid of letting anyone down.
I honestly thought that’s what integrity looked like.
Recently, I’ve started asking a hard question: Is this tired feeling something I can sleep off, or is it something that needs a boundary?
To be honest, I can’t ever sleep things off — even when I go to bed on time. I wake up in the morning, and I pick up the same burden I carried the day before.
Over and over.
A few weeks ago, I took note of how many times I checked my email in a single day. It was more than fifty times, and that didn’t feel unusual. That wasn’t just scanning. It was checking. Opening. Reading. Reacting. Responding. Rechecking. For weeks, there’s been no actual emergency — nothing that needed resolution right then — just a persistent itch that something might need me.
And of course, that’s where the fundamental problem lives: everything starts to feel like an emergency when you never say no.
I’ve been an adult for 25 years, and I’m learning — perhaps remembering — that part of being a healthy, functioning adult is knowing when to protect your energy from the endless stream of “just one more thing” and “Hey! Real quick.” Because no matter how much you care — and I do, to a fault — you can’t run on integrity alone. Especially not when you’ve equated integrity with self-abandonment.
There’s a massive gap between devotion and depletion, but if you willingly close your eyes, you’ll never know it’s there.
The older I get, the more I realize that being a person with integrity doesn’t mean trying to be a superhero. It means being honest — even when the truth is, “I can’t do that right now.”
My younger self — the one who got out of bed at 3:00 a.m. for someone else’s briefcase — might have called saying no weak. He might have said I was making excuses.
But now I see the strength it takes to name your limits and stick to them. To build a wall around what matters most. To say, “I want to help, but not like this. Not at the expense of my health, my marriage, my family, or my sanity.”
Most days, I still fall into the same old patterns. These awakenings are pretty new. I catch myself checking messages on a Sunday afternoon (I literally just did before sitting down to write this), or mentally rehearsing the schedule for the coming week while my youngest tries to show me his latest YouTube creation. But I’m trying to be better. I’m learning to want to pause. To breathe. To remember that rest isn’t weakness, and boundaries aren’t selfish.
Sometimes what I need isn’t a break. I need a door that closes after 9:00 p.m. A door that protects being home — and actually being there.
There’s a version of me that will probably still climb the mountain, meet the need, and burn the candle at both ends. But he’s not the man I want to be most of the time anymore.
That guy? He built a canyon with all his yeses.
Now I’m trying to build a path out of it. A quiet one with fewer detours, more guardrails, and plenty of room to rest. Enough room to say no.
Enough room to live.
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