Some days are best when they are over – End of the Day for May 6, 2014

It wasn’t a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”, but rather one of those days that starts out “Meh” and sort of continues that in varying levels throughout. We all have days like this, I am sure, but that is little comfort when you are mired in one. I look for ways out, changes in routine, interesting activities, whatever, but life just sort of chugs along on the same track with no switches in sight. Hence the title of tonight’s post. I thought of it just as I sat down, but I do think it is appropriate. Days like this are best when they are over. You — and the entire world — needs a few glasses of water, maybe some ibuprofen, and a good, good, night’s sleep. That usually solves the problem for me and soon after I hit the post button I plan on doing just that.

One of the big issues today was other people. in his play No Exit, Sartre said, “Hell is other people” and on days like this I believe him. First, there are the people who break one of my most important personal rules — “I don’t ask that you make my life easier, but please don’t make it any more difficult.” Some people cannot understand this and impose their own version of Hell on those around them. We all suffer under such people unless we remove ourselves from their presence and/or area of effect. I do my best to avoid such people, but in life it is nearly impossible. Interact with enough people in a given day and you will find them.

Next, after you have dealt with people like those above, it will color your day and every other interaction you have. On most days I can ignore thousands of petty annoyances with nothing more than an exuberant eye roll, but if your day is already colored by people like the above, every minor pinprick becomes excruciating and brings forth an dark anger from some unknown place deep within us. We find ourselves screaming at the idiot who couldn’t be bothered to use a turn signal or drive 35 in the fast lane. Any other day, we would just go around them, but today we rant, we rave and exhaust ourselves even further.

It can be so hard to extricate ourselves from these days as one indignity builds on another until we just want to find a nice little cave somewhere to live out the rest of our life. We can’t do that, of course, as in most cases, life must be lived in concert with other people. it isn’t the end of the world, of course, but it can feel as if Atlas has given you his burden for a few minutes while he nipped out to the 7-11 to get another pack of cigarettes. We aren’t really designed to carry this burden, so it weighs heavily on us.

It has been a trying day, “But for now, rest well and dream of large women, ” as Wesley tells Fezzik in The Princess Bride. Sometimes sleep is the only remedy to days that are best when they are over.

Previously on End of the Day: