Those Days When We're Just Not Feeling It

Everyone has days where they’re down, or simply not feeling it. When this happens, our attitudes, our outlooks on life’s possibilities, and most importantly our happiness is skewed.

I wish everyday could be happy. I wish I could feel my best everyday, but never in anyone’s life will that ever happen. When I was five, I became mad over who got the last cookie in class, or who was the line leader in 4th grade. Now I become mad when I don’t perform well on a test or when I miss a workout. I believe there’s always going to be something that upsets us, and this is proportional to our age. For example, by the time I’m an adult, I may become disappointed with my performance in an interview which leads me to not get the job I want. There are so many possible outcomes in life which makes it difficult to pinpoint what triggers us. All I know is that things that trigger us are continuously going to change. 

This brings me back to what one of my house counselors told me, that one day, your world just expands and things that used to matter no longer do. It simply like now I don’t care who has the last cookie in the tray, or who’s the first to enter the classroom, or who’s the first to leave the classroom in the line. Things that used to matter to my 5-year-old self no longer do, and perhaps that’s the first signifier that yes, my world is expanding. I envision that in 20 years, that one physics test I bombed isn’t going to matter, even though it does today. Our worlds are expanding, and before we find what truly matters, the grass will always be greener on the other side.

That being said, I’m not always perfect. There are going to be days when I do things and when I say things that I otherwise wouldn’t do. I’m happy to say this usually only happens on my down days or on those days where I’m “just out of it”. In middle school, I worked on an art for social change project about empathy. I think it’s especially important in those times for me to be able to find my circle of people who will empathize and understand my exceptional, seemingly out-of-the-blue behavior that’s really a manifestation of an inner struggle. I suppose this week has a lot to do with that empathy project I worked on in middle school. Empathy is being with a person when they’re struggling. Empathy is understanding that on a blue day, a person will probably not be themselves and to be okay with that. Empathy. There it is again, a word I used to just say meaninglessly thinking I understood what it meant. Now I do.