The Freedom Of The Worst Day Of Your Life
Programming Note: While I write literally all day at work - emails, slack messages, whiteboards and more, I haven’t actually sat down and truly written anything in many years. Encouraged by my wife, Mary, to start sharing some of the stories of my life, especially with our daughter, Emma, I’m going to take on the challenge of writing down as much as I can remember about the moments which have been important to me along the way.
Emma, I hope one day you’ll read and enjoy these as much as I’ve enjoyed remembering them.
Think back on the worst day of your life. Bring it all back and try to remember as much technicolor detail as you possibly can about what happened. Where you were. What was said. Perhaps what wasn’t said. Who was there and your attempts since it happened to rationalize it and make sense of it all. Think about all the useless anxiety and rumination that’s happened because of that day. How you’ve allowed what happened to live rent-free in your head, perhaps for years. And how a single day, out of the thousands you’ve been alive, has shaped you and crafted your decisions since then.
For me there’ve been several worst days. For the longest time my worst day was when I got a particularly bad grade on a test at school, and was made fun of by others about it. I still allow that moment to surface every now and again, even though I am well aware of how small and insignificant it is, and how I’m the only person who ever thinks, or will ever think about this. Then there was the day I got diagnosed with cancer, a common worst day for millions of similar sufferers and survivors. That day someone very close died. That day a truck took my car out on the George Washington Bridge. Or that day when I had a particularly challenging day at work, several of which all seem to blur together these days into one mega-worst hybrid day of days. Stupid days where I’ll have said something regretful and then spent months ruminating on it, especially lying awake in bed as the nocturnal demons of the day come out to play. Days of those near to me passing away. Days of disagreement and frustration with others and at our lot in life.
But if we think about the pathology of the past against the promise of the present, we can understand that the worst day of our life has already happened. And if we believe this to be true, it’s incredibly freeing. That nothing can be as bad as what happened that day in the past. That in contrast, the best day of our lives are always something which lives in the future.
I remember thinking this a lot after my cancer diagnosis. That little things at work which had previously annoyed me just faded away into insignificance much faster than they would have in the past. The thought of ‘how bad can it really be?’ often crossed, and still crosses my mind. Is the mistake I made worse than the doctor telling me what was going on, the room going dark, and my ears no longer working? Not really, right? Jobs and projects will come and go, just as those you work with will come and go too. And as George Harrison loves to remind us, all things must pass. But what’s incredibly freeing is the feeling that whatever terrible things you’re going to experience in life, the worst ones have already happened. It’s a method that’s appreciative (not only in the sense of gratitude but also in the sense that it accrues value over time), but also something that empowers you to deliberately, consciously feel more optimistic. To spend less time on the pathology of previous events, and more time planning for the positive outcomes ahead. It frees us from the anxiety of impending events, and gives us often much needed perspective on the useless anchors of unhealthy nostalgia.
I write this from the privilege of a warm Miami hotel balcony, high above the city and thousands of miles from the horror of war currently unfolding in the Ukraine. Where for those involved every day is absolutely worse than the next, and my insignificant musings on positive outcomes are easily acknowledged as beyond tone deaf.
But what I’m talking about is what we recognize and embrace as strength in the Ukrainian people. Their belief in what they’re fighting for. Their belief that tomorrow will be better. And their belief that what they seek to protect is the right thing. It’s what we admire in them, and why hundreds of countries and companies are lending their support. As a global community we see it and know it’s the right thing to do. This lending of support is acknowledgment of empathy, of positive belief, and a voice in dark times that the future is always bright, not matter how dark today may seem.
This may seem like a small thing. It may sound like it’s easier said than done. Both are true. But for me as just one person it’s a really small but highly effective thing I’ve found to really help, especially in times of challenge or stress. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Free yourself of the worst days of your life by realizing that they are exactly that, part of your past not part of your future.
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