I was thinking today about how often we refer to our days as good or bad. The question that came to my mind was, “what makes a day good or bad.” If you really take a moment to think about it, a day is neither good nor bad…it just is. Events that happen or the circumstances that surround us during a day are really neither good nor bad. What really defines how we view a day is the way we respond to events and circumstances. While we may not always choose the initial emotional response to a situation, we do control how we respond in the longer term. We can choose to dwell on the negative aspects of a situation or we can choose to learn from it and see the positive side. I do realize that, depending on the situation, this can be very difficult at times, but it is still within our power to change how we will let things affect us.
This is also true for life in general. While we may not have control over a lot of the events and circumstances in our lives, we do have control over how we let them affect us. These are, of course, those things that are outside of our control. What about circumstances that we can control? So many choose to remain unhappy in their circumstances and these circumstances are often changeable. If they are not changeable, then how we let them affect us is. A friend of mine, who is a counselor, loves the words from a Trooper song “Raise A Little Hell” (yeah I know, that dates me) and she thinks they offer great wisdom:
If you don’t like what you got, why don’t you change it.
If your world is all screwed up, rearrange it…
If you don’t like what you see, why don’t you fight it.
If you know there’s something wrong, why don’t you right it…
Going back to the good day/bad day question…maybe we should not be asking whether someone had a good day or a bad day. Rather, we should ask, “How did you choose to respond to your day?” Just a thought…
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I really like this reflection. It makes me wonder why we ask each other at all. Growing up in the Deep South, it was almost rude not to ask how someone's day was going.
ReplyDeleteBut every time I'm asked, a little mental probe runs over my body and looks for something to be wrong. It's as though I was fine just accepting my day "as is" until someone asked me to evaluate it in its totality.
I wonder too if evaluating everything in our lives -- our days and our vacations and movie -- cheats us a little out of savoring an experience in all its complexity. On some level aren't we distilling something that's beautifully rich into a simple evaluation (good/bad)?
I agree...I think we cheat ourselves a little when we try to evaluate every experience in our lives.
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