A little less than a year ago I joined a new project team after having been on leave for many months. We did a finger shoot, per usual. I was a ravishing 5. I remember my exact, sincere, clumsy words: “I’m just straight up happy.”
It was only a handful of weeks after I lost my beautiful mother, Ruth Ann Berman, to cancer.
It devastated me, to be sure. I had spent the previous 9 months caring for her and my father after we learned of her terminal diagnosis. But I also knew that she would have given anything for more days. So far be it of me to waste mine.
It’s pretty common to have a “bad” day at work. Easy, even. And since “days at work” comprise most of our days, this is a big deal. I would never tell anyone when they’re upset to just “suck it up!” and nor does it work anyway. Some days, like all humans, I’m grumpy and I can’t shake it. But more days than not, I can shift my perspective from the root. It’s a gift my mom left me. I simply think about how stupidly wonderful it is to be this person on this planet at this time having a day at all.
Or in the words of Mary Oliver:
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
Like the phrase we throw away when leaving an elevator or checking out at a store:
Have a good day!
Except I really, really hope you do.
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P.S. I figured this was a decent post for Halloween. When else can you be morbid and joyful in equal measure?
❤️🙏
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