|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There was an advert on TV in the UK in the 1980s with a cheesy jingle that came back to me with a smile this morning: “Start your day with Nescafé, coffee at its best.” It stayed with me. Not because of the coffee, but because of the idea.
A quiet thanks is sometimes overlooked.
When you are in the ascent of life and succeeding in building your career and personal life, you tend to celebrate, or at least mark, the big events as milestones. You remember the bad days, but the average day often passes you by. The day when not too much happens, it is a little boring, you did not achieve anything great but did not fail either.
When you are in the descent of life and heading progressively the other way, the reverse seems true. You note the big milestones with sadness, and you remember the rare good days, such as the day your daughter got married.
What about the days when there is not too much to say, or in my case, to write. These are often overlooked because they are, in fact, good days.
Yesterday I was not happy. In fact, I was angry, and I can measure it in a number of ways. The main one being that I talked myself into eating a lot of vanilla ice cream. I am not proud of this metric, but it is consistent and reliable.
Last night, I am not afraid to admit, I went to sleep scared. I felt a real sense in the pit of my stomach that I did not know what I was waking up to this morning. Would it be a much worse situation, a new symptom, or something worse still.
I woke up and, apart from my head bobbing, which appears to occasionally join me in my daily routine, I think I am ok. Of course, I am not ok in many senses, but hopefully the tabloid press following me, which numbers zero, need not send out the paparazzi. It was a terrible night’s sleep, less than three hours, and my eyes are watering, and on and on. But it was a pretty uneventful wake‑up. And on a morning like this, uneventful is the win.
The danger is that I overlook the peace and calm that comes with these days. The moments of normalcy. The chance to not be an angry person, which I was yesterday. The hope that I will not have to deal with a crisis today.
Many people who read my blog are not of faith, and not of my faith, but I want to offer a thought this morning because, after all, it is my blog. We have a short prayer we say on waking up which goes: “I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great.”
I had a thought. Surely it makes more sense to offer praise at the end of the day, after you have been able to fulfil your potential, to make even a small difference, rather than offering it speculatively into the unknown.
But that, I think, is the whole point.
You say thank you before the day has delivered its verdict because that is the attitude you are choosing to walk in with. It is a chance to hit the reset button, or reboot, when you are starting to slide, and as every IT helpdesk in the world knows, that solves most problems. You are not thanking G‑d because things are good. You are thanking G‑d because you are still in the game, intend to show up for it, and have the chance to influence it, even if only in tiny fractions.
Whether it turns out to be a milestone day, a moderate day, or to be honest a bad day, I am still here, turning up for business. I have the chance to perhaps do something positive, be kinder to my loved ones, learn something new from the whiteboard of my younger daughter, and of course watch the culmination of the World Snooker Championships.
I know it is pretty sad that this is my yardstick as opposed to climbing mountains or hiking in the desert. But the descent is not meant to be easy, and I understand that more people come to grief on the way down from a summit than on the way up. I am not entirely sure this is true. It makes my point though, so I am keeping it.
Other people close to me take their cues from my mood. That is an extra responsibility I carry, and any parent or leader reading this carries it too. Which is one more reason to hit the reset button at the start of the day rather than waiting to see how things go.
So, here is to the snooker.
And to a largely uneventful day.
