What Does “I Had A Bad Day” Even Really Mean?

Does he know? Photo by Sanket Kumar on Unsplash

I think I can surmise today as a day of unfocus. Or lack of attention to anything outside my immediate satisfaction.

Maybe I was honest with myself. Maybe I need to detach from my identification with shortcoming. Maybe I’m facing the consequences of prolonged selfishness.

Or recklessness.

I never want to be passive. When I encounter opportunity to show and think and express I want to have the capacity to do so. I’m left unfulfilled when I don’t or can’t. I want to recharge from a place of strength and goodness. I don’t want to rely on factors that are manufactured, fleeting, and harmful.

I just realized I witnessed something sad today. Like I’m just now remembering a moment in my day where something small and insignificant happened, but it has deeper meaning as I consider it now. I know it matters because I have a distinct image of it in my mind. Earlier I had an opportunity to comfort, or at least make known, that I cared and valued another person. In the moment, I caught it — that it mattered — but I was not able act upon it because I was either scared, self-conscious, or stunted by the complexity of the situation. It happened quickly. I did not act on it and I wonder why.

Life is probably a battle of balance. We have to manage the days, the weeks, the years, the life. We are always moving towards equilibrium or away from equilibrium. Not forward or back or side to side, but within and without. Balance. I don’t know if the cycle ever ends for us emotional, irrational, imperfect creatures. This is perhaps the great challenge of conciousness.

Today I just felt like I wasn’t sufficient. Not in my own at least. Head knowledge only took me so far. When it came to living out what I know, I was not able to do it. Work was meaningless. My passion against a glass ceiling. My ability to remain present defunct. Subsequently, my zeal and lust for life were marginal. I was not even or sharp enough to be genuinely curious or inspective about the things outside myself.

Which means I had a bad day.