We All Have Bad Days, but Perhaps Not Bad Lives
On my worst days, my thoughts go to Ernest Hemingway.
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“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway
I’m learning to understand that isolated bad moods and bad days are just that; singular occurrences. They’re single moments that don’t need to repeat if I grab my mental reigns and get myself back on track. I remind myself why I’m running up that hill, why I’m digging myself down deeper, why I’m rolling that boulder every day.
But there are just some bad days that are so steeped in melancholia that it isn’t so easy to bounce back to a place of resilient determination. Sometimes, I end up having a day where it really feels like the boulder rolls backward and crushes me.
I’m usually not quite this honest about my day-to-day thoughts and feelings. At the very least, I usually don’t write about them so frankly and share them with the internet so openly. But as a part of my journey as a poet and as a writer, I’m trying to be more open and authentic. Right now, that means cracking the door open on bad days, too.
Since you’re reading this, you’ve probably experienced something similar. It’s a battle to remind yourself that a few isolated bad days don’t equate to a bad life. It sounds a little melodramatic to say it so plainly, but it’s true. We don’t have to be swept away completely by our bad days.
It’s hard to play the role of the determined optimist at times.
One of the dilemmas I’ve been stumbling across recently is that I’m realizing people who I look up to, people who seem to have it all together, actually have some noteworthy vices. A poet who I really admire as a creative content creator casually posted how she was having a night of no drinking or smoking to give her body a break. I stopped short; there was a heavy implication that this person did these things on a regular, nightly basis based on how she phrased the comment.
I grew up in a small town where alcoholism and drug user were rampant, so I tend to take notice of comments like that. I don’t know enough about this person to speculate if they have a problem or not and I don’t want to be judgmental…
