“I’m sorry you had a bad day.”
“I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough year.”
Those are all things people say. People say them to express care and compassion. And they’re all predicated on the idea that a few, or even many, incidents in either that day or that year can characterize that entire time period.
I’m not sure that I think that way anymore. I definitely used to think that way. Even a single bad incident in one day would color the entire day. For those of you who have watched the animated movie Inside Out, it’s like when Sadness touched those glass balls of memories from Riley and they turned blue. And Joy got so upset and told Sadness to stop touching those memories because Sadness was turning the otherwise joyful memories into sad ones.
Minor spoiler alert…
As Joy learned in Inside Out 2: Our memories are often a beautiful combination of various emotions.
And in the same vein, every time period, whether it is a day or a year, is composed of many incidents and a myriad of emotions.
When my loving and patient partner comes home from work I usually offload a ton of thoughts and a stream of consciousness list of things that I did that day. And some days he’ll summarize his supportive response by saying: “I’m sorry you had such a bad day.” Or “I’m sorry you had such a rough day.” And in the past I would have said: “thank you, yes it was.” But in the last few months, I’ve found myself pausing when he says those words. Such a global summary characterization of my day no longer rings true for me. And I’ve been consistently responding to him: “no I didn’t have a bad day.” Just because I had a few bad things happen in that day, that doesn’t characterize the whole day.
So with all that in mind, if someone were to look at the rough points of the past year for me, one could definitely say to me: “wow I am so sorry you had such a rough, challenging year.”
And their kindness and compassion would be appreciated and would definitely have validity if one were to view my year through the lens of being defined by the worst incidents.
But I also had huge breakthroughs and huge acts of strength and resilience. While I would not characterize the last year as a great year, I would also not call it a bad or rough year. It just was. It was a year full of really, really rough low periods, and also full of great, surprising things.
Time constantly flows. We have designed these artificial demarcations of days and years. Yes they do correspond to sunrises and sunsets and seasons. Months tend to be characterized by full moons and new moons. We like to organize our time. But in the eons that time has existed and that even this Earth has existed, our simple human demarcations are relatively meaningless. Time flowed on before we appeared, and it will continue to flow after we are gone. So to characterize our lives based on a mere day or a month or even a year seems so simple and limited compared to the grand scale represented by all of time: past, present, and future.
I had planned to summarize some of my lows and highs from this year. But the above post came out instead. Maybe I’ll write another post about my 2025… but for now I’ll leave you with:
May your movement through time be peaceful.
May you experience love and joy along the way.
May your rough/bad moments be balanced with good and grounding ones.
Sending love to all of you 💜🙏🌍
https://youtu.be/qM4ivs-jYxE?si=GboK3OU3GEoPWG_x
“Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. Lyric video (shows the lyrics). This links to a fundraiser for True Colors United, which addresses LGBTQ youth homelessness.
Leave a Reply