The Day After

The day after the Fourth of July, the day after Christ­mas, the day after New Year’s, the day after your birth­day, the day after you were hired or fired, the day after grad­u­a­tion, the day after the big move, the day after the funeral, the day after the mar­riage or the divorce, the day after the day after…

There are more than fifty-two “Mon­days” in a year. Emo­tion­ally, it is almost twice that. More often than you may like, you face a day that is sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent than the day before. Each of those “days after” may be a bit grim. We humans do not take on the load eas­ily. Given the oppor­tu­nity, we would make our world into end­less Sat­ur­days (and accom­plish noth­ing). Heaven has no day after — nor does hell I sup­pose. In the mean time we are on the cal­en­dar roller coaster that seems to end where it began.

The older I become, the more I level out the roller coaster. My “days after” are not ter­ri­bly dif­fer­ent than my “days before” — and I like it this way. I once read a sug­ges­tion that went like this: “See life steadily and see it as a whole.” Good advice for those of us prone to Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der! What goes up must come down — so keep an even keel.

For­give me if I only nod to hol­i­days. My life-celebrations are a bit each day. That works bet­ter for me. I have learned to stay in the fox­hole — or close enough to it to stay in life’s bat­tles with some ease. Avoid­ance can become an addic­tion rather eas­ily. There is only one “day after” that really counts, so I work on it day by day.