Good days or bad days?

How do you know whether you’re going to have a good day or a bad day? The truth is, there is no way you can tell. The day just creeps up on you and takes you by surprise. There are days when you think nothing significant will happen when your cell phone beeps with an unexpected text. Suddenly you smile. The whole day changes. The sun seems to shine brighter even if there’s a typhoon outside. You ask yourself — am I walking or soaring? You seem always to be smiling and giggling at everything even if you live alone. Without a doubt it has turned out to be a wonderful day.

Other times you wake up humming, noticing the quality of light outside your room, walking around your little garden admiring the blooms. The doorbell rings and you hand over your car keys to your driver. Then your cell beeps. The car won’t start. The person you’re expecting to meet is required elsewhere, cannot come today. You break one of the plates in the kitchen. Everything goes wrong. Your mood dips into gloom. An almost permanent furrow almost knits your eyebrows into a sweater until you notice it. Your lips are caught in a heavy pout. Unexpectedly you have dipped into gloom, a terrible day, and you can’t wait for it to end. Who knows what brought it on?

Some people say you can predict the sort of day you will have with solitaire. If you win, you will have a wonderful day. Does it work? I know experientially it doesn’t. There are days when I wake up in the morning and sit and play Spider solitaire and I win the first hand. I expect a wonderful day and don’t get it. There are days when I have already had outstanding experiences before I sit down to play and it takes me an hour and 10 minutes to win one hand. So I say with much authority, that’s not true. Play solitaire or whatever computer game you feel like because you enjoy it. It isn’t trying to make a statement on what kind of a day you are going to have.

So how do you foretell what kind of a day you’re going to have? Do you really have to know? 

I suppose when you are young you are full of anxiety. That’s how I remember my early years, my 20s and 30s. Dashing to the office full of worry. Will we be finished on time? Are we doing the right thing? What if it’s not, will we be given the time to redo? Can I do it all if someone else fails? Then I got promoted and it became more of the same thing but the pronouns changed. Will they finish on time? What if they’re not doing it right? What do I need to do to motivate them? Can I do it all if they fail?

For as long as you are working those are the anxiety-ridden questions you ask. Then you retire. Do you stop working then? No, my dear readers, you never stop working until you die. Only your work changes, as do your attitudes, and you find you have learned other lessons.

The major lesson is, trust God. He, a man to me, is my best buddy and I trust Him with my life. Does it make sense to put your life in His hands? Yes, it does, to me. Sometimes He will test you, yes, but He also always gives you the strength you need to survive. He gave me the worst seven years of my life, but managed to give me — I don’t know what it was — the will, the strength, the determination to survive. I don’t know what it was because there were times when I felt I lost my will to live, even to look forward to the next day. There were times when I felt I had no more strength to get out of bed and walk around the apartment, no more to give to the care of my mother. There were times when I searched for my determination. What did I do with it? Did I stick it in a box and mail it to Timbuktu? What did I do with my life?

But nevertheless, after seven years here I am — alive, vibrant, laughing most of the time. What made me survive? I put my life in His hands.   I am not Born Again, not even a great Catholic, and I resent people who send me biblical quotes so I quietly trash them. My experience — and let me say that it is vast — has taught me only one thing that I value: to trust God. He will make the days good or bad and give us the strength to live through the bad and to really enjoy the good and to still awaken with a smile to greet a new day not knowing what kind of a day it will be.

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