These Are The Good Days

“If you ever miss yourself, just watch this.”

“I’m never going to miss myself.”

– June, 2017

Most of my days my mind wanders between what I used to have and what I one day hope to have, dismissing that which fills the room where I currently stand.

But I didn’t know that back then.

Back then, though not long ago, feels like an eternity. And an eternity ago, I didn’t know what I possessed I would one day so deeply miss. I didn’t know that over the course of the next few years I would scroll back to that video in which those words were captured, missing the version of myself that had so much, wishing I could shake her into awareness.

Lucid dreaming. Ever heard of it? Essentially it’s when you become aware that you’re dreaming while you’re still in the dream. A quick google search says only 23% of people experience this sort of awareness regularly. I’d say it’s the about same even when we’re awake.

How many days do we spend unaware of the good that surrounds us, our attention given instead to our lack?

It's logical to assume I must of been ballin’ out back in June 2017 if I miss it so much. Truthfully, that season included waking up with my head in my hands, heavy with dread for the coming day, overwhelmed by things I couldn’t make sense of and taken aback by my inability to fix any of it.

And yet...those were the good days?

One of my newly favorite books is The Book of Forgiving, in which the author (and maybe my new favorite person), Desmond Tutu, highlights our ability to choose forgiveness and therefore own our narrative because who wants to have their life story be the sum of all the ways they’ve been hurt? Not me.

Yet to be utilized to its fullest extent, I’d say forgiveness cannot be limited to the people that hurt us. Sometimes, we must forgive our surroundings for what they are not in order to appreciate them for what they are lest our stories be defined by what we always seem to miss.

This means the days of my deepest depression were the good days; the days of heartbreak and ruin were the good days; the days of unmet expectations and disappointment were the good days. Not because those things were good to me but because within those very same days were once-in-a-life-time experiences hidden beneath the assumption of normal.

This assumption of normal is a death sentence to living fully. We can neither take what we have for granted nor wait for the world to be what we want for even what we want changes, permitting the good days yet another passage of escape. But the good days are not only to be remembered in yesterday or hoped for in tomorrow. They are here, today. THESE are the good days.

I often remind myself of this. It’s the hand that pulls me up and out of forgetfulness and into awareness. I don’t want to be caught sleeping. I want to be aware that what I have now, I did not have before, and one day will wish I still possessed. Because the truth is things come and go, leaving a string of temporarily satisfied desires unless re-written.

I suppose these words are just for that then – a re-writing of the realization that while I may not be able to have it all at once, over the course of time, I will collect every good thing life offers until the good days are not marked by unawareness, but are a reality I lived in each day without exception.

These are the good days.