A Great Day

"Make it a great day or not. The choice is yours."

Every day, from the first day of 6th grade all the way through our last day in 8th grade, my middle school classmates and I would hear those words coming from the morning announcer as we languished in home room. We would snort, roll our eyes, snap our gum and recite it silently along with her.  

"We knowwww" someone would inevitable moan, leaning back hard in their chair, pen sweeping in meaningless doodles across a notebook.

It was a joke. Nothing our adolescent minds could capture with any sincerity.

But, this morning, as I awoke with a tension headache already building, thinking of another week at my job filled with too much work and no help, that phrase popped into my head. 

As a child, I thought our teachers were silly and irrelevant. I thought they couldn't come up with anything better to say. But I think what they were saying is something very important, that I forget too often. We can spend a lot of time each day blaming other people for why our lives aren't going the way we want, but that won't change a thing. Life is hard and always changing and never the way we picture it. I think what our morning announcer was telling us was to take responsibility for ourselves. We don’t get to choose the world we live in, but we do get to choose the way we react to it. We choose the lens through which we will view our day, and we must make that choice every, single day.

With that command echoing in my head, I didn't linger in bed despite my anxiety about the day. Instead I got up and spent time reading my Bible and storing up peace for a long day. I rejoiced in an open seat on the T for my 45 minute ride in. I counted bursting Spring buds and red-breasted robins as I walked in the Public Gardens during my lunch hour.

My circumstances didn't change, but my perspective did.  Despite the piles of work, the lack of support and the potential to be a no good, horrible, very bad day. . .today was a great day because I decided to make it one.