What It Felt Like

It felt like a fog.  Days feel unclear and muddled sometimes.

I saw someone post a quote online: “Write in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a lovely thought.  But it is utterly false.

It is cruel to ask people who are grieving to look at each day as the “best”.  It shames them into thinking that they should be in a different place than where they are.  Or I have a friend who underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer and had a mastectomy the other day.  Should she look at every day as the best day of the year?  Or how about people who are suffering, truly suffering, every day?

It is a wholly unsympathetic platitude.

How easy it must be for people not currently experiencing any type of pain to put a sunny outlook on everything.  How easy it is to discount the fact that pain, misery and sadness are components of life, and those who are on those types of journeys should not be made to feel “less than” for not viewing life with rosy optimism.

I receive daily emails from ProjectHappiness.com and while on some days I like the uplifting message, on other days I think “Yeah.  Fuck that.”

It is learning to tune out the noise of others telling you how you should feel.  That your journey should be compared to others.  That suffering should look in the face of suffering, and by sheer willpower, say “This day is the BEST!”  It undermines the human experience, which includes all aspects of reactions, emotions, and perceptions.