So you had a bad day...

Sometimes a day is just bad. There is no silver lining, there is no room for interpretation, and no one can do anything but wait for it to be over. It is all relative of course, but sometimes I just have days that just are no good. In high school, I found myself having so many things that could make me happy or sad, but in the end, no matter what was happening, it felt like the entirety of my happiness was based on sleep. I could be having the worst day with everything going wrong, but as long as I had enough sleep, I felt pretty good. Now as an adult, I find that my body doesn’t just rely on sleep alone.

I have found that more and more what I eat determines if I am going to have a good day or not. My biggest enemy has been salt. If I eat too much, I begin to get a “hangover” of sorts. Spicy food and dairy products seem to also tax my body much more than they used too, but I am not sure if it is my body being intolerant or if it is too much to deal with.

The point I am getting at is that for me, good and bad days, or at least the potential for either, relies on my body. The difference between a “bad day” and bad things happening for me is an important one. Bad things happen all the time, but many of those things are beyond anybody’s control. The only thing a person can do is identify what they can do to make things better and act. Bad things happening is like a rain storm hitting an area, while an individual bad day is like a rain cloud that only rains on an individual.

This is not to say both can’t happen at the same time. The key is being able to see the things that a person can change and what they can’t. They say god and the devil are in the details, perhaps they didn’t mean both at the same time, but I interpret these proverb mix-ups to speak a truth: everything is in the details. Being able to change the small things for the better can be the difference between a good day and a bad day.

If none of that works, well, then it comes down to acceptance. Sometimes bad things happen, and whether they are your fault or not, they have to play out. If you are having a bad day, maybe the best thing is to lay low and try to learn something from it. Remember what Clint Eastwood said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Well, a character he played said that, but it works out all the same. If all else fails, hopefully this hit song from 2004 (which as far as I can tell, was required listening at Japanese schools from 2004 to around 2010) can turn that frown upside down.