I took the line from a George Strait song. Somehow, I can’t imagine George will mind.
Goals Status:
- Marathon: On Track. I missed my workouts for the last two days, but I’ll be back at it as soon as I finish this.
- Two Square Yards of Earth: Making Progress. I finished Chapters 6 and 7 last week.
- 100 Posts: Behind Schedule. Barely. This is my 27th post for the year. I should have released it on Sunday.
I’ve been sick for the last few days; some sort of respiratory infection has made the rounds in my family, and Easter weekend was my turn. It’s easy to get down on yourself when you’re sick: I feel awful morphs into life is awful quicker than most of us can say keep it in perspective.
Of course, it’s a small step for many of us. We wear our hard lives on our sleeves, holding on to hard times like trophies, comparing scars both real and figurative, continually reminding ourselves that others have it worse–and using that knowledge to feel guilty about how bad we feel about our own lives. I think it’s better today than it was when I was young, but Americans still embrace hardship whenever we can, and invent it when we can’t find it to embrace.
But in order to do that, we have to live our lives looking backward. We have to drive through our lives with our eyes glued to the rearview, instead of looking through the windshield.
It occurred to me yesterday, in the euphoria of coming out of several days of feeling lousy, that I don’t need a new car, or a million bucks, or the approval of thousands to have a great day. I just need to decide to have a great day.
It’s not the first time the idea has occurred to me, but it is the first time I’ve felt compelled to write about it.
I’m making the same decision as I head out for my run this morning. I’ll make it over and over again in the course of the day. Bad things may still happen. I’ll almost certainly make mistakes. People may decide to be upset with me. Plenty of stuff could happen in the next fourteen hours or so to justify me allowing it to become a lousy day.
But only one thing has to happen for it to be a great day: I have to decide it’s a great day.
Incidentally, that’s the only thing on the list that’s entirely in my control.
This could be the best day of my life. I choose to make it so.
What do you choose?