I wrote today’s haiku first thing this morning. Recall that I had pledged to write a haiku a day in the month of May. Here is today’s entry that I have not yet shared in my online creativity group.
Reach, grasp, struggle, cry Letting go, not giving up Peace comes with a sigh.Today has been a pretty awful day, frankly. Not quite start to finish; no matter how hard a day is I still have moments during which I at least smile and sometimes even laugh. As bad as I felt off and on over the course of the day, I still managed to get some work done at the office and took care of some other business. I have a few difficult tasks ahead in the next day or two, but somehow in the midst of that I’ll smile, be grateful, and manage to get some work done.
That’s the way of things with most of us, I believe. Every day, except under the most extreme circumstances, we have the opportunity to make what has been a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” into a “whew, I made it through this day and can still manage a smile in the midst of it. My knees are wobbly, but I’m still standing.” Now please don’t mistake me for a “life is rosy” optimist. I can be a very cranky, curmudgeonly, bah-humbug, royal-purple-funk, pessimist that could make Eeyore look downright sunny. But, the truth is that at the end of this day I can still redeem it, simply by changing my attitude. I hate it when people say that, like it’s a simple thing to drag oneself from a day’s deep disappointment, grief, anger, depression, physical pain, or any combination of these or other states and suddenly make everything alright. No, it’s not a simple thing, it’s not easy. But it is possible. Expressing gratitude is part of the equation, of course. It brings me back, allowing me to counter the “bad” that has happened in a given day with an oasis of “good.” I’m not always good at it, but I practice it every day.
So, I reclaimed this day today and will do my best to carry over the reclamation into tomorrow. I might not succeed, but it won’t be because I didn’t try.
