“I’ll give you a winter prediction: it’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” – Groundhog Day
Never let a groundhog drink and drive. Or, drive. They always look at intersections too long, looking left, looking right, checking for shadows.
“What does your ideal day look like?” – Ryan Holiday (LINK)
I wrote that down in my notes the first time I read it – it seemed important, a question too few people ask. Thinking about it, it seems even more important because I think that we often sleepwalk through life following the plot of one of two tragedies:
- We live the life we live – because one day we’ll change it.
- We live the life we live because we think we’re forced to.
Let’s look at the first one:
“We live the life we live – because one day we’ll change it.”
I think this is the mode that most people get into. They get up, and go to work. They live a life of unending Tuesdays – it’s not horrible, but it’s unchanging. Existence consists of a grey world that gets them from the chiming of the alarm in the morning that wakes them up to the flick of the light switch that’s the last sound they hear before closing their eyes. It’s like Groundhog Day, but without Bill Murray’s zany antics.
And again. And again. And again . . .
It’s not a bad life, but by my observation this life is filled with lots of “One Day I’ll” thought. One Day I’ll go to Europe. One Day I’ll climb that mountain. One Day I’ll (fill in your blank here). Heck, you could put anything in that blank because it’s something you’re never going to do – most of those One Days never come. This life is built upon dreaming about the things you’ll do. One Day.
The second life is more tragic: “We live the life we live because we think we’re forced to.” In this case, each day is a prison. We spend that day not because we’re doing something we want to do, we’re doing it because we have to do it. Our lives are at the whim of outside forces in the universe. And they keep us confined, in small corridors. If the first life is grey and unchanging, this one is a very dark grey and seems to get darker and longer each day. It’s the life-equivalent of being married to Rosie O’Donnell, and never being able to be away on a business trip.
This is a life that isn’t built around One Day. This is a life that is lived in regret, sacrificed to the past and I Should Have. It’s about the choices you think you Should Have made and how you are a slave to those results, today. You cease to be in control of today because you allow the Should Have of the past to determine who you are today and who you will be tomorrow.
I can understand the attraction of Should Have. It’s scary to look down the barrel of life and to think that you’re living a life that you chose. It’s much more of a comfort to believe that your actions today won’t change anything – that you’re the victim of those that would control you, or of your own past choices. Being under the control of your past choices is the best one because it’s guilt that makes its own gravy!
Should Have assures you that each day of your life is lived in prison. I worked with one particular gentleman who didn’t like his job, not at all. He didn’t like his wife – I think he was afraid of her. Pretty sure he didn’t even like where he lived. And you could see it wear on him, every day. Why did he do it? Honestly, I’m not sure – I think he might have liked his Prison more than the scary idea of being responsible for himself.
There is, thankfully, a third choice, and it comes back to Ryan’s question from the beginning of this post: “What does your ideal day look like?” That’s crazy, because the question itself implies a choice. You could live your ideal day. Not every day, perhaps, but many of them.
If you live the Eternal Tuesday, your ideal day is One Day. If you live in Prison, your ideal day is release from Should Have, which, unfortunately, is also your life. Neither of those sound too good, but both sound better than the whole Rosie O’Donnell marriage thing. I imagine she smells like 7-11® nacho cheese left over from the Clinton era.
Comment redacted.
However, if you live a life of Now, you realize something pretty cool – in almost every moment of your life, the past three seconds were okay, and the next three seconds are okay. While you don’t have the ability to change your past, you have the ability to choose how you feel about today. This paragraph is from the conclusion to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
Shukov went to sleep fully content. He’d had many strokes of luck that day: They hadn’t put him in the cells; they hadn’t sent his squad to the settlement; he’d swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he’d built a wall and enjoyed doing it; he’d smuggled a bit of hacksaw blade through; he’d earned a favor from Tsezar, he’d bought that tobacco.
And he hadn’t fallen ill. He’d got over it. A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the cell to the last clang of the cell. Three thousand six hundred and fifty three days.
The three extra days were for leap years.
Apparently the Soviets didn’t teach drawing in kindergarten – no time for such trifles: Soviet Youth must be strong to plant potato on Collective Farm #8675309. (Ask for Jennyski.)
I recommend the book. Short read, with a decent ending that I just (mildly) spoiled above. I’m not going to apologize for a spoiler on a book that was published 56 years ago, because if I do, you’ll just be upset when I tell you that Soylent Green is people or that Bruce Willis is really one of the dead people, or that the people from Atlantis killed Kennedy.
In your next three seconds, you will be okay. I’m not telling you that you don’t have to be concerned about the future, and I’m not telling you that your choices in the past don’t determine your present. Both of those things are absolutely true. But living in the future is a lie, and being chained to the past is a torture. You have now. So, if you want to fight to make the world better, yes, please do so! I try to do that daily. This blog is part of it. And though my present actions are limited by my past choices, I still have it in my power to do amazing things with every year that I have left to me.
I’ve spent time in the Eternal Tuesday, that’s why I can describe it so well. In the Eternal Tuesday one day blends into the next. I kept putting off things that I wanted to do, because I’d do them One Day. I sifted through my memories trying to give an example, but I simply can’t think of anything interesting to tell you about an Eternal Tuesday – it’s always Tuesday. Always grey, always featureless, and not a lot happens until you wake up and realize a year of your life has passed without you noticing. It’s like being in Congress, I think, but with less self-loathing.
I’ve lived in my own Prison of the Past, too. Mainly for a fairly short time, but it’s a dark place to be. In my case, the prison was brought about by internal office politics – even if you try to stay out of them – I assure you that they will take an interest in you. I’m not even saying I’m blameless – if I didn’t cause the situation, I certainly didn’t manage to stay out of them. But I escaped each of them either by taking action to change them, or, like Shukov in the quote above, I’d managed to understand that I could be happy with my life as it was right now, not to be upset that it wasn’t how I wanted it to be, but still work with every fiber of my being to make my life better.
But you have the power in your hands to make today your ideal day, and you’re not married to Rosie O’Donnell.
So, why not give that a shot? (The ideal day thing, not the marriage to Rosie.)
Rosie is a national treasure. Think how many ugly and/or fat young ladies would have gone full on SJW Cat Lady if they hadn’t seen her as a cautionary tale. The next time you get lucky in the bar at 2 AM, thank Rosie.
Wow . . . I’m trying to remember the last time I was in a bar at 2am. Maybe it’s good that I can’t?
I’m on my second marriage; so is my wife. Both of us had years of trudging through the daily grind, without much relief. It was way too long for both of us.
After we met, we found short trips to local areas were the most pleasant times together. As time went on, we made some decisions, which included selling a house too large, a new car for her, a new much smaller home, and the goal to spend time doing what we like.
We’ve already taken some short weekend trips, and plan on doing more. We both like visiting areas most people don’t pay much attention to. That, and any quilt store we happen to find. My wife quilts, and I enjoy watching her “kid in the candy store”: expression, when she finds a fabric that catches her eye.
We used to take long drives, especially when we lived in Alaska – so much to see. I think part of the definition of the Eternal Tuesday is having kids in high school – so busy, all the time.
Coincidental, I suppose: early on in my reading of this post, in the “unending Tuesdays” part, I was thinking of a bit from Solzhenitsyn. Mine was from “The First Circle,” where Nerzhin, the zek mathematician, decides not to make a compromise that would allow him to stay in the sharaska, even though he’ll be returned to the camps. Talking to another prisoner about his decision, he quotes a folk saying: “It’s not the sea that drowns you, it’s the puddle.” I think the puddle corresponds to the unending-Tuesdays life.
I’ve also thought a bit about how I got where I got. Most of my career was — I’ve been retired for a few years now — an unending-Tuesdays deal. I’ve been married to just one woman, for almost 44 years now, and I’ll have to admit that, if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have married her (and I think, if she’s honest, she’d say the same about me). But that thought leads to others, such as: had I not married her, my now-grown children wouldn’t exist. And that’s not to be thought of. Also, such speculations are based on a set of unconsidered assumptions about how my life would have gone had I chosen otherwise, and there’s no reason to think those assumptions true. Had I not married that woman, perhaps in that alternative life which lacks my children, I’d now be dead, or in some miserable state … I mean, reality is a tangled and complex thing. Change one bit, and who knows what happens somewhere else? It seems to me that these what-if games amount to an expression of ingratitude to God for the reality that He gives me, the one in which He lets me make choices, and enjoy or suffer the results.
So I really think the thing to do is to rejoice in the life I’m living. So what if it’s Tuesday again? Let’s enjoy Tuesday, just for the sheer, ineffable Tuesday-ness of it.
Oh, and uhhh, Rosie … well, I’ll take Ma Wilder’s counsel. I ain’t got nuthin’ to say.
Indeed. My first marriage gave me two daughters – I wouldn’t take it back for just that reason. You can’t change a second of the past, so enjoy this moment, even if it is Tuesday, especially when you’ve chosen this Tuesday. And remember, if it’s Eternally Tuesday, it can also be Eternally Taco Tuesday.