I had a tough day on Tuesday.
The details don’t matter – think back to your last challenging day and that’s how I was feeling.
In response to my tales of woe at dinner, Andrew kindly said, “Wow, you really had a crappy day!!”.
Do you know what flashed through my mind right then?
It was that even if, instead of having challenging meetings, I had just spent the day buying lottery tickets and one of them had won us $10 million on the spot – STILL – we would have been sitting at the same dinner table together, eating the same chicken dish I had made, with Minnie and Ellie politely perched in the same spot waiting hopefully for a small piece of chicken.
That’s just the way it is. Dinnertime usually comes, no matter what.
In fact, if I’d won the lottery instead of having challenging emails and calls, my whole day would actually have been the same. I guess I would have had different thoughts, since we consider winning a lottery to be ecstatic-making news and think about challenging work meetings as a drag.
But I’ve read that winning a lottery for many people introduces new strife and unhappiness into their lives- and for people who are unemployed, a tough day at work might be the best thing ever.
It’s indulgent to get all worked up with an interpretation of events that is optional and that doesn’t change the dinner menu.
Having said that, of course we are going to get all worked up- it’s a pandemic! – and we are all human, and a shout out here to my big brother, John, who during my crappy day provided a virtual shoulder to cry on.
Sometimes we just need to cry.
And then have a nice chicken dinner.