The Perfect Day

Ground­hog Day is an old movie that depicts a very mis­er­able man hav­ing to live the same day over and over again until he changes his atti­tude. Bill Mur­ray did a great job in that role (one of his best). His cyn­i­cism has to be con­quered before he stops liv­ing the exact same day in end­less rep­e­ti­tion. In short, he learns to turn a really bad day into the per­fect day. The movie implies that it took him hun­dreds of attempts before he got it right.
I have often reflected on that movie, because it is such a fit­ting para­ble for so many of us. We do not real­ize that what makes a good day or a bad day is not the events that hap­pen, but it is deter­mined by the way we react to those events. Some days may present eas­ier pos­si­bil­i­ties than oth­ers, but any given day is pretty much a blank can­vas. We paint with our per­spec­tives and atti­tudes.
In my book, the per­fect day includes a storm, an unex­pected phone call about a com­plex sit­u­a­tion, too many tasks to accom­plish, a pend­ing dis­as­ter, mis­takes, a puppy, a funny line from some kid (over­heard in a store usu­ally), com­fort­able shoes, cof­fee with witty peo­ple, lunch at my desk, a beau­ti­ful sun­rise or sun­set, and mis­cel­la­neous hap­pen­ings that I can­not con­trol. My per­fect day is not loung­ing around on a beach. I find more mean­ing in chal­lenge. Vari­ety is cer­tainly the spice of life, but it has to be inter­preted in the light of some sub­stan­tial phi­los­o­phy (per­son­ally, I like Chris­tian­ity).
The per­fect day is punc­tu­ated with some insights — some­times the result of a painful strug­gle. Depth in never found in mere amuse­ment. Pro­found under­stand­ings some­times arise right in the mid­dle of non­sen­si­cal ver­biage. Maybe wis­dom has life of its own and deliv­ers its gifts on its own sched­ule.
It is still dark out­side. The per­fect day is on the way!