The meaning of each day

The prime value and meaning of each new day is that it is an opportunity to love. If we cannot come to see life this way, we will not have lived to the fullest, or gained what we were intended to gain.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard is that you should always be thankful every day just for waking up. Don’t take it for granted that you will wake up tomorrow and have another day to live.

I’ve often wondered about this advice. It sounds so true – to use a physics analogy (which I warned you in my introductory post might happen occasionally), it makes my soul resonate on some of its most fundamental frequencies when I hear it and think about it. But I’m not sure I truly know why. I mean, most days I’m not frankly that grateful to wake up. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. And why? Because most days are so full of responsibilities, expectations, requirements, work and stress that I can’t honestly say that I wake up saying to myself, “Oh goody, here we go again! I love this!”

Which gives me pause to consider why the advice to be grateful every day just for waking up is so profoundly true. I mean, I’m not grateful. But I ought to be. What am I missing?

My own experience has provided a window of insight (and I’m sure, on reflection, you will discover yours has too) that might lead to a breakthrough on this one. In an attempt to resolve the conundrum, I asked myself, “have I ever been grateful just to wake up? When have I been grateful to be alive, to have the incredible pleasure of living? When has life been joyful to me?” Let me share with you some examples I thought of, and see if you can tease out the commonalities, the underlying themes.

The first experience I thought of was during my two year volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church” – yeah, it’s kinda long). For two years I spent all day, every day with a colleague talking to people about God, his son Jesus, and the plan they have for our lives here on Earth. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but for most of it I was legitimately happy. Sure, there were times when the homesickness (I served thousands of miles from home), difficulty getting along with my colleague, or the stress of talking to complete strangers in a foreign language overwhelmed my happiness. I’m only human. But for most of the time, life was joyful and I was happy. Not because life was easy. It certainly wasn’t. But even though it was hard, I was happy.

Second, I thought of a time when I volunteered (after my mission ended) on a committee – again, affiliated with the church – that organized, planned, and put on inspirational talks and lectures about spiritual matters and life in general for the students at my university. We would invite talented, wise individuals to come address the student body (the event was open to the entire university, but most of those who attended were members of the church), then prepare the main meeting hall of one of our churches for the event. This involved setting up hundreds if not thousands of chairs. Then, after everyone had left (which often took an hour after the event ended) we would take down the chairs and clean the building before heading home. In all, it would often take four or more hours of effort on the day of the event and several hours of preparation beforehand.

One winter night after one of these events I left particularly late. As I exited the building I realized it had been snowing hard the entire time and the ground was covered in at least 2 feet of snow. It was cold, and I hadn’t dressed for the snow, as it wasn’t snowing when I had arrived hours before. I trudged across the parking lot, the snow coming up past my knees, heading towards my car. It was a lump of white in an otherwise deserted parking lot: I was the last to leave. As I unburied my car with my arms, I remembered I had a test the following day in a very difficult physics class and I hadn’t had time to study much.

It was then that a funny realization hit me: I was happy! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I was cold; I was wet; I was the last to leave on a miserable snowy night; I had a test the next morning that I should have been stressed out about. But I wasn’t – on the contrary, I was happy.

I could mention other experiences too, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at two. Thinking back on these and other times I felt truly happy to be alive, I discovered the following remarkable correlation: my being happy had nothing whatever to do with the ease of my life. The level of ease, of pain, of convenience, of entertainment and fun; all these had nothing to do with my happiness. In fact, if these had been the prime determinants of my happiness or misery, I should have been very miserable, not happy.

Instead, it seemed to me that I had been ignoring my own ease, pain, convenience, or entertainment, and that this had somehow caused me to be happy. As soon as this thought hit me, I remembered my reasons for not being happy to wake up every morning. I had thought that so long as my life were stress-free, responsibility-free – in short, full of ease, convenience, fun, and short on pain, then I should be happy. And being grateful to wake up every day would be natural.

I realized that I was completely wrong. In fact, the focus on my own life and my stress, troubles, responsibilities, etc was what was bringing me down! When I forgot to think about them because I was too busy thinking about others, worrying about or serving others, I was truly happy. The motto “forget yourself” came to mind. As did Jesus’ teaching, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Which leads me back to my conclusion: the meaning of each day – the reason to be grateful and happy just to wake up one more time – is that it affords each of us the opportunity to live for others, not ourselves. In short, each day is an opportunity to love.