Making a Day

Some lines from movies catch on seemingly instantly.  One such line is the angry threat, "Make my day!"  Originating in Clint Eastwood's line in Sudden Impact, it has become either a humorous or an earnest response to the challenges that rear their head -- challenges which can seem to be embodied in some other person.

There is a quite different sense, however, in which it can be said that a day is "made."   That other sense is demonstrated in lines from a song I've sung in my head for many years, without until recently knowing the song was written by John W. Peterson.  The lines are taken from the Bible's Psalm 118:24, which reads (in the NRSV translation):

"This is the day that the Lord has made....

Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

Although the impact would be slow, I think we would be better off if everybody repeated to themselves those two song lines at least as often as our society repeats the Clint Eastwood line. By that I do not mean I think our society would be better off if everybody believed in God. What I am trying to express is applicable to everybody, whether believer, agnostic, or atheist.  I am referring instead to cultivating an ability to recognize that each new day is something that has, in a sense, been given to us.  And I am referring to the possible effects if we oriented ourselves so as to more often find within ourselves a spot from which some bit of gratefulness or joy might emerge.

What "makes" a day, anyway?  In elementary school (or before) I was taught what makes a day arithmetically:  24 hours make up one day and night; 60 minutes make up one hour.  It seemed so simple then -- just a matter of memorizing some numbers.  Now, countless days later, it seems so much more complicated.  I can only begin to sketch out how for me days have been made up of different mixtures of the routine, the slightly unusual, and the truly unexpected.  Not to mention the mixtures of challenges, sadness, joy, and gladness.

It is not the mathematical measurement but those emotions that can enable me to expand my awareness to other people, to other animals, and even other plants.  And, with just a bit of imagination, I can reflect upon what makes up the days of other kinds of creatures.

I can think, for example, about the routines of birds, waking at dawn, dispersing outward to explore for food, resting on telephone lines, and returning home as sunset approaches.  I can think about the boredom of animals confined in zoos, and how their lives must be made up of even more predictable routines (in the same way that I can try to empathize with the lives of people in prison).  Using my imagination a little further, I can even think of how, in slow motion, a tree's day is made up of the rising sun filtering through its branches, the rain later trickling down through its leaves, and its microscopic inner growth.  I would prefer to use my imagination in those ways than to use it to think about ways the Eastwood dare might be employed.

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Life is indeed challenging, but is there some means by which you try to shape your days?