Musings From The Heart
An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 83 March 23, 2012
Good Day
Good day everyone. Even if you aren’t having or don’t even want to have a good day, I still wish you a good day. My good day is different from the g’day that you hear every three steps in Australia, for I’m not just greeting you, I am wanting to remind you that today is a good day in your life, and an important day. Each day that we live is a step forward, hopefully better and beyond yesterday’s step. Even if today’s step is a step backwards or behind, that in itself is a good day, since you noticed it, and now you can do something about it. I say good not as the opposite of bad, since we all long for good days and not bad days, but more of its quality and value to you. With this perspective, even and especially bad days are very good days in the quality and value that they offer our lives.
A good day is really a point of reference, and good and bad are actualities that are relative to our feelings of appreciation and gratitude. A really good day for really old constipated people is any kind of bowel movement, even if painful or loose, something that does not occur to the average teenager. A good day for a teenager is to hold hands and stroll with a date for the first time, and strolling with your partner of 70 years when you are 90 and arthritic is also a very good day. A good day for a Muslim girl longing for Western freedom is to walk the streets with her face unveiled for the first time, something that would never occur to the average Western woman. When we have a good day, we feel so conscious and appreciative and grateful for the feeling of what is good about the day. When we are conscious of what is bad about our day, we are having a feeling of un- appreciating and we are feeling un-grateful for our day. In an ironic way, we are also valuing our experience our bad day by noticing it, and this is a unique kind of appreciation, and perhaps even more fruitful for us and our lives.
When we all strive for “good” things and not “bad” things, especially how our overall days go, we corner ourselves into feeling good about good and feeling bad about bad. Unfortunately, when our happiness and overall state of living are cornered in goodness and not badness, we are rarely ever happy or good, since we become dependent on investing in one and not the other, and we rarely ever get what we want. “Today is such a good day. Today the air went into my lungs, and the carbon dioxide came out just right. Today the plants around me did a good job of making me new oxygen”. Now that is a very good day. Any kind of nourishment in and poop out, good day. Liquid in and pee out, also a good day. Today I escaped the saber tooth tiger and made it into my cave, another very good day. My heart is still going bumpety-bump, and I still have the mental awareness that I am alive, and I ambulate pretty damn good for a half century old dude, that is even super good. In terms of having good days, what else do we really want or need?
We humans, even if we are mobile and aware creatures with our health and our basic nourishment, are in no way necessarily having any semblance of good or happy days or lives. The miracle of our “awareness of self” also brought with it the ability to value or appreciate and be grateful, or not, for this awareness. Most of us in fact are miserable most of the time with our awareness of our good lives or bad lives, or we would really be miserable if we ever told ourselves the truth of our situations, and the comparing and contrasting of what we really dreamed of in our lives. We all have so many woes and disappointments to rant or express, and they are all so pressing and important. That is until the bumpety-bump in our chest skips a beat or more, or our air won’t go in and out right, or food or water or poop or pee let us down.
There are many clichés and idioms about good days and bad days and appreciation and hope in terms of having a good day or bad day. I would like to offer one too. It goes like this: WOW. Today I made it home an hour early. The tail wind coming back from Vail at 30,000 feet was incredible. I didn’t know that my twin turbo prop airplane could do 450 knots indicated. WOW. Today I spent 4 hours sitting still on the interstate with a quarter million other irate people on account of the multiple death accident that closed the interstate. WOW. Today I got my ass fired for showing up to work late and hung over again. WOW. And only a month after being promoted for the highest producing employee in the company’s history. WOW.
The truth is that our brains can do all the ruminations that they want, and we can practice any style or amount of control or affirmations that we like about our good or bad or happy or sad day or lives. The actual reality of our selves and days and lives come from our hearts, and our hearts are the hearts of a child still waiting for our metaphoric Merry Christmas and hopeful Happy Birthday, somewhere deep inside us. We can spend a lot of energy speaking of spirituality and belief, and of prophets dripping blood on crosses or sitting in meditation under trees, but the truth of us and those legendary prophets resides and resided in the happiness of the heart. Nothing you and I will ever do out there in our good day or bad, and nothing that ever can be believed on a cross or practiced in meditation will ever change the state of your happy heart or life. Our hearts are storage devices for hope and for pain, and the only way to have a good and happy self and life and day, is to feel the pain and grieve our unhappy hearts.
We are simply WOW, and our lives are simply WOW, and they will be forever, both good and bad, no matter what we do. The WOW is not out there to believe in another, or out there in a practice or understanding or belief. Our WOW is right in here inside us, and how we feel about ourselves in goodness or badness. The beauty of our good day or bad day is that we can know of our own appreciation and gratitude of self or not, and we can alter our circumstances to learn to know our own hearts. We have the ability to heal ourselves and lives. We can change our inner heart state of our inner good day or bad, and we can become much happier and more enlightened than any supposed God or Prophet by appreciating and being grateful for ourselves, and that means all of our selves good and bad, and on good days and bad days.
Today I had a really bad day! WOW. That means that I have a lot to notice and appreciate, and a lot to change and appreciate, so that I may have a good day tomorrow and have a lot to notice and appreciate, and a lot to change and appreciate. WOW. I just appreciate my and life and all things good and bad. Breathe in, plant food out. Food and water in, poo and pee out. Bumpety-bump goes my heart, I’m aware of myself and am doing my best. WOW.
See you tomorrow
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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