What makes a good day good?
I just realized I don’t actually know how to answer this question.
Let me back up a minute.
I was just sitting down after lunch and I had a Vonnegut moment.
I love Kurt Vonnegut. He’s an absolute fucking legend. Storyteller, philosopher, funny, flawed, fucking brilliant. I just adore the dude.
And he said “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
(I actually used to have that sticker on my water bottle because I’m ND and love stationery and also personalization; I like being able to broadcast clues about myself, the things I like, the things that define me, in hopes that someone who also likes those things will see them and say hey! That’s cool! I see you. This is also why I have an irrational hatred of those stick figure family bumper stickers like really? That’s how you define yourself? How generic and reductive.)
Anyway.
I noticed I was having a good day, and thought to myself “this is great.” And subsequently thought “Go me, I’ve made Kurt Vonnegut happy,” even though he’s dead and never knew me.
(But just because I’ve done something for a silly reason, like imagining I’ve made one of my idols proud, doesn’t make it less healthy or helpful, so I’m rolling with it.)
But then I had another thought, a puppy thought, chasing the first one’s tail.
“What’s so good about it?”
Not vindictive or malicious, just curious.
And then I felt my brow creasing, my smile slowly slipping from my lips.
Because I didn’t know.
And I feel like I should.
It seems important, because I’ve just come out of a long run of quite bad days. And I can describe what was bad about them easily.
I felt heavy, exhausted. Hateful. Angry. There was a fog of resentment clinging around my head and it kept me from seeing good in people, from having fun, from feeling joy. And I was sick of myself feeling that way. I could see the fog, knew that it was polluting me, but I couldn’t shake it. Which only made it worse.
And here I am, a week beyond it now, the cloud of misery dissipated, and I’m not hating everyone and everything, namely not myself, at least not all the time. And I can laugh and be silly and sing and just generally go about my day without the stabbing knives of my thoughts just slashing everything to pieces.
So why has today been a good day?
It wasn’t a lack of frustration. I did growl and bark at my kids this morning, getting them out the door for school. I was sarcastic about serving their breakfast and packing their bags, calling them “your majesty” and “his lordship.” And bowing like the servant I felt I was. There was no milk for my coffee, empty carton in the fridge. Deep sighs. Pressed lips, flared nostrils. Muttered oaths. Maybe not even muttered.
It wasn’t a lack of anxiety. I felt that gut-punch of uncertainty the second I got into the car. What was I going to do with my time today, and would it be enough? Would it matter? Was my daughter having a good time at camp? Was it weird that I brought the teachers eggs from our chickens? Did anyone notice my body – the bulgy bits I don’t like? Did I smile correctly at the other parents as I passed them on my way out of the classroom? Were my thongs too noisy on the stairs?
It wasn’t lack of shame. The curling-in feeling hit me on the way to the library, realizing the cleaner was at the house, probably picking up dead cockroaches and other disgusting detritus from the last two weeks of my family living there. Despite having been working on a number of projects for weeks, nay, months, I’ve still not guided a single one to completion. My critical failure to launch crushed the breath from my throat, sends scolding voices cascading around my head like a choir of judgemental nuns.
It wasn’t things going to plan. This morning was the first in a week that it isn’t flesh-meltingly hot, so instead of getting straight to work, I decided to take myself for a walk instead. While the break in routine did fill me with dread, I made the decision and convinced myself it was ok to deviate from the schedule I impose upon my productivity. Then when I finally fired up my laptop, it took ages to install updates, robbing me of still more work time. In the end, my writing was derailed by my rumbling stomach and my body’s insistence that I stop what I’m doing and feed it, an hour early. Very rude.
So I still felt all those things. But they didn’t stick. They didn’t hover and cling.
Is that the secret to happiness? Being slippery? Being able to maneuver through the bracken of the day without picking up any burrs?
If so, how can I use this knowledge to keep myself effectively un-sticky, so the billion little barbs don’t catch in my skin? So they don’t draw blood? So the prickers are just part of the bushes I’m walking through, and not an army of evil vines, purposefully attacking me?
Is it something simple, like getting enough sleep?
Is it meditation? Mindfulness? Forgiveness and acceptance work?
Is it having something to look forward to? Something that lights up my sense of purpose?
Or is it shedding some level of expectations, giving myself a break?
Truthfully, it’s probably all of those things. There are no truly closed systems. There will always be too many variables to control for in this grand experiment we call life.
But that doesn’t make those things more accessible from the depths of the dark cloud.
Maybe it’s got more to do with the grip. How tightly I hold on to things.
Feelings are fleeting. Even when it feels like you’re stuck forever in a loop of despair.
We want to hold on to good days. To keep up the momentum. To ride the party bus til it runs out of fuel.
And in an effort to make that emotion last, maybe we forget that the transient nature of feelings is a good thing. It means we don’t have to be stuck in the doldrums. That the big ick doesn’t have to last forever either. Maybe instead of trying to force our way through it, we just keep on trudging, slow and steady, and have faith that eventually we’ll get to the other side.
Eventually, we can find our way back to the place, where as my man Vonnegut so blithely said, “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” Even if that place is a fantasy, a filter applied to life rather than life itself. It’s nice to have something to believe in.