Karma

I've begun to realize that what makes a bad day (or a bad week, or a bad month) is the realization that you are having a bad day in the first place. The moment you think, "Wow, this is a Bad Day," you begin seeking out evidence to support your case. Matters that would normally seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, like nicking your finger with a knife or getting caught outdoors in a downpour, instead become additional proof that the universe is conspiring against you.

I feel like this realization ought to give me power over bad days. If I recognize that I create a Bad Day just by giving it the name, then the appropriate thing to do would be never to name it, to recognize that it's largely psychological and that there are any number of good things that I'm ignoring. But sometimes I don't want to be rational. I want to be mad at the world. Sometimes life doesn't work the way I want it to, and recognizing that the universe is against me at the moment makes me feel a little bit better. Sometimes if I feel like my entire life is on the verge of falling apart, and then my dog bursts through the screen door and runs away for the dozenth time, and rather than being the last straw, it's the event that finally allows me to laugh and say, "Yeah, life kind of stinks right now."

But I didn't set out to write this post because of a Bad Day. Rather, I decided to write it when I realized that the reverse is also true. Yesterday, sometime around midday, I realized that I was having a Good Day. I also immediately realized that the rest of the day was going to be just as good simply because I had already determined that it would be. By realizing that I was having a Good Day, I had automatically programmed myself to pick out the good and ignore the bad.

And it was true. Yesterday, all of it, was a Good Day, not for anything big that happened, but for all the little, happy details:

• A nice run.
• A walk with Jin through a subdivision-wide yard sale down the street, with lots of friendly adults and children.
• Stumbling upon free parking at the farmer's market...
• ...which was very fortuitously right next to a secondhand/antiques store where I found a little $10 shelf that was exactly what I'd been looking for unsuccessfully for the last month or so.
• Finding a Sunday dinner recipe that only required three ingredients that I didn't already have.
• A weekly shopping trip for less than $7 (well, $9 if you count the milk I bought a couple days ago).
• The Comcast people showing up, earlier than expected, and successfully accomplishing what they said they would accomplish on the visit.
• Taking the long way to Ashley D.'s goodbye party and driving through parts of Michigan I've never seen before.
• Listening to Iron & Wine in the car. I really should not have let this sit neglected on my iPod as long as I did.
  
• Sunshine, grilling, brownies, friends, strangers, dogs, kittens, and babies at Ashley's goodbye party.
• A brilliant idea for a project involving my new $10 piece of furniture.
• Jin in a really playful mood.
• Starting Season 2 of Pushing Daisies.
• Beginning a new book.
• Watching a movie with girlfriends.
• Going to bed by eleven.

Once upon a time I had a little notebook and an idea for filling up the spaces when I wasn't writing in my journal, something I was struggling to do regularly at the time. Every evening I would sit down with my notebook for just a few minutes, and I would make lists that looked a lot like the one here, lists of what had made me happy that day. Some days it was hard to think of what to write, and the lists were kind of short. But usually once I got started, I would think of one thing after another, and the list would grow rapidly. Unlike yesterday, I didn't always realize I'd had such a good day until after the fact, but even if it took writing it down to realize it, I had an awful lot of Good Days.

Now I feel like I can't finish this post without it turning to flowers and rainbows and ponies, but there is some truth to the idea of choice. Some things really are out of our control, but there are many times when we can choose to be happy, choose to have faith, choose to love other people, choose to do good with whatever circumstances we are in. I'm still working on it, but I like to be reminded that working on it is worth it.