Are you good tired or bad tired? I'm working on becoming good tired.

In about 1988, Harry Chapin, one of the greatest story tellers of all time, and an incredible musician, spoke about his grandfather.

He called the message, appropriately, "My Grandfather."

I'm particularly moved by the second paragraph which has hit too close to home for much of my life. As I climb the ladder of the pinnacle of my career, when I finally close my eyes for the last time (which I don't wish or expect to come too soon), I want to be good tired. In my mind, being good tired also means doing good by people. The third paragraph is also an oxy-moron as part of my job is to support other people's agendas and dreams when I am retained to do so.

Please read on.

My grandfather was a painter. He, uh, died at age eighty-eight. He illustrated Robert Frost's first two books of poetry. And he was looking at me and he said, "Harry, there's two kinds of tired. There's good tired and there's bad tired."

He said, "Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other people's agendas, other people's dreams. And when it was all over there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn - you don't settle easy."

He said, "Good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you don't even have to tell yourself because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, You sleep the sleep of the just and you can say, take me away."

He said, "Harry, all my life I've wanted to be a painter. And I've painted. God, I would have loved to have been more successful. But I've painted, and I've painted, and I am good tired, and they can take me away."

Now there is a process in your and my lives, in the insecurity that we have about a prior life or an afterlife. God, I hope there is a God, if He is - if He does exist He has a rather weird sense of humor, however. But let's just - but if there's a process that will let us live our days, that will allow us that degree of equanimity towards the end, looking at that black implacable wall of death, to allow us that degree of peace, that degree of non-fear, I want in.