QUESTIONS FOR A BAD DAY

I am curious about something. When you are having a really bad day -- what in the 90s was referred to as "a day from hell" -- are you the sort who:

A) Wants to be actively cheered up by others through positive words and actions;

B) Wants others to commiserate with you i.e. express pity and sympathy and give you a shoulder to cry on;

C) Wants to recuperate emotionally on their own, i.e. "hit reset" and start over again with no help at all

D) Wants others to make you feel better by telling you they are doing even worse.

I'm curious about this because I had a shit day today. It was not shit the whole way through, but at the end of it, which is now, I likened it to losing a 15 round unanimous decision: I finished on my feet, but I lost, and I know I lost. And throughout the day I reflected on the various means by which people tried to cheer me up and which I tried to cheer myself. I settled for C, which is probably my default, though I admit for many years my default was B, i.e. seeking pity or at least an ear in which to vent; and to my complete unsurprise, I rediscovered that D only makes me feel worse. By no means does it help me in the slightest when you try to compete with my misery by telling me yours is worse.

Now, does this indicate some (additional) psychological failing on my part? Shouldn't the knowledge that huge numbers of people are dying in wars and famines, or just generally have wretched lives, give me a sense of perspective and shock me back into the realization that I, simply by virtue of being American, probably have it better than 90% of the people on this planet? That I have employment, a home, enough food, clean water, a car, conveniences, friends, and enough money and free time to indulge my passions, most notably writing, and that a crappy day doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things?

The answer is probably yes to all of this. "First World Problems" do tend to sound trivial and embarrasingly trifling when compared with the existential woes which grip billions living on this planet, who by random chance or God's design were born into abject poverty and war. But here is the problem. I don't live in the Third World. I live here, in America. I'm not being bombed, shelled, strafed, or sniped. There are no land mines buried beneath the trails I hike. I am untroubled by famine or plague and am reasonably free to express political and other types of opinions without governmental persecution. I'm a white, middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual American distinguished by my rather unusual side-hustle, and I have the sort of problems that come with that particular set of baggage. In other words, I have no frame of reference by which to calculate what a "bad day" really is by the standards of, say, a Ukranian or a Yemeni, and I am scared shitless of having one.

In our society, we are now judged to some extent by the amount of hardship and victimhood we have experienced. Why this happened I don't know, but I do know it happened within my lifetime. The things people used to be ashamed of -- prison time, drug addiction, scandal -- now land people music deals, book deals, reality television shows. And it so happens that despite having had a rather interesting life, and having taken my fair share of knocks literal and figurative, I don't know what true hardship or suffering really is past some of the things I have discussed here previously: I've gone hungry for long periods of time, seen death up close, known personal tragedy and heartbreak, but nothing, really, which would intimidate or impress others I've known who've been homeless, served in wars, grappled with addiction, battled cancer. It's a sliding scale, and I'm on a rather comfortable end of it. Nobody is asking me to make a rap album, and I ought to be grateful for that. And I am...now. Now that I am at home and thoroughly wound-down. But I wasn't today, when I was blowing my circuits over all the petty, shin-banging obstacles that were in my way.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that at the age of 51, I am still looking for means by which I can keep perspective, and therefore, cool, in the face of all the annoying, aggravating, frustrating and pettifogging nonsense which life tends to throw at us. I am still groping for the tools to deal with adversity as it happens and not hours later, when the emotional damage is done. I find myself reminded today of song lyrics I heard in college which struck me, then as now, as having been written for me personally:

I was looking back on my life
And all the things I've done to me
I'm still looking for the answers
I'm still searching for the key
The wreckage of my past keeps haunting me
It just won't leave me alone
I still find it all a mystery
Could it be a dream?
The road to nowhere leads to me

The curious thing about bad days generally is the way they shift the way we look at life. I don't just mean that because we are in a temper or depressed we see life in a negative manner. I mean that they tend to slow things down, bring a certain stillness, a certain thoughtfulness, to our existence. A bad day is rather like sitting alone in a cafe on a cold, rainy Monday afternoon and staring out the plate-glass windows at people as they scurry past. It is sad and discouraging, but it forces you think about life in a way you would not when things are going your way and the sun is shining. It makes you contemplative, teaches lessons the way failure teaches lessons. I'm not exactly sure what I learned today, if anything, but I do know that I am curious enough as a result to keep asking questions...which, I'm reliably informed, is a fairly respectable way to get answers.

Not such a bad day after all.