Every Day Is Not The Same: Day 4
I’ve always assumed that our moods are cyclical. It only makes sense because sometimes I am happy and sometimes I am sad and sometimes I’m somewhere in between but always I am these things again.
We were talking on Facetime when I finally got a good enough connection and I was explaining my venn diagram of relationships. If I’m spinning a circle with pure joy being the top most point and pure misery being on the bottom I am likely to go through the full spectrum over the course of a month or a year. A month is a small sample that will give solid data but a year is tight. At the same time she is going through her own cycle with pure joy on top and pure misery on bottom and our pace is slightly different, our points of departure not likely the same, but our clashing inevitable.
This means commitment. Commitment to the process of being affected by another person and knowing that sometimes you have to give up your pure joy because their misery needs more attention. The bouncing can hurt people like us but not bumping into each other at all is a much worse scenario. Our circles have lifted a little higher.
Today was a good day. I was on top and so was she. This kind of day can carry many days. There is no guarantee that tomorrow will be the same. The closer I hold onto it the more likely I’ll wake up empty. This was never OK. But somehow it is now. Lately I think about fate.
Every day for 365 days. That’s how long it takes to really know something. The first time you drive to the mountain it might be a Sunday and it might be 72 degrees and the night before you drank 2 glasses of wine and watched a movie on Netflix. It would be fair for you to say, after you hiked the mountain, that you know what it feels like to hike that mountain. But you would be wrong. Because the next day hiking that mountain would be with sore legs, you’ve just gotten into an argument with your dad, and you forgot your cellphone at home so you couldn’t take a sunset pic at the top and no one knew you were there at all. Now you might think you know what it feels like to hike that mountain. But you still don’t. Because the next day you take a friend and you talk about work while you’re hiking and you forget to breathe as much or drink your water bottle because that seems dorky and by the time you reach the top you have a small headache. You can wear the same clothes the next day and go at the same time with the same friend but still, it will not be the same hike.
Only people that stick to things know things about life. Only people that do things repeatedly are worth trusting. Our life is affected by our behavior. Our thoughts are empty without the action.
I encourage anyone to do any one thing every day for a year. No pardons, no glorified excuses, no fear. It’s a different world and you’ll leave many behind but whatever you want to make moving forward you can because now you know how things work.
