One Good Moment

I am not the person who thinks every day is a magnificent, joyous experience. I don’t believe you need to immediately recognize gratitude during the times when life is battling against you. For even the worst of our moments, gratitude comes later. Often much later. Especially when the experience is big enough to fundamentally change who we are.

My belief is smaller than that. Simpler. I believe in finding one good moment, every day.

There is no point in pretending to be happy and grateful when you aren’t. You might be able to convince other people that all you feel is warm sunshine. But you can’t convince yourself it’s true because you can’t ignore that you are shivering in the cold. Faking it makes you feel more alone than if we can just admit what we actually feel. That this unpleasant, uncomfortable moment isn’t our favorite moment.

Some days are harder for us than others. Some weeks, some months, and some years too. And that’s okay. I think we’re better when we can admit when things are tough.

Not to complain about the challenges we’re facing. Not to drag sympathy for ourselves out of other people. We don’t need to make anyone else’s day colder or darker when we admit that our day has been a tough one. We can just simply say that today isn’t our day, and that’s okay.

If I’m honest, most of the last six weeks haven’t been my day. Nothing has happened that I would consider a catastrophic event, capable of setting the tone for everything else. It’s really just been several unrelated smaller experiences that happen to be occurring simultaneously; piling one thing on top of another. The culmination of it all has been heavy.

So I’ve done what I always do. When life becomes hard to carry, I look for one good moment. Not one good day. I learned long ago that a whole day is far too much to ask for when you’re in a rough season. For me, it’s about finding one good moment. One small piece of the day that floods your cold, aching body with warmth.

A single good moment pulls you back to yourself, even if the warmth only lasts a few minutes. On a hard day, a few minutes of warmth are all it takes to keep you from freezing.

A good moment can be the two minutes of calm, quiet stillness with your morning coffee before the chaos of the day begins.

It can be checking one thing off your endless to-do list, or a few minutes of catching up with a friend. Sometimes my good moment is having a smoothie bowl from a favorite lunch spot. Or being able to slow down enough in my day to hold the door open for a stranger.

Or something smaller. Like the light breeze bringing the day’s lilac scented air to your attention.

Or the few deep, slow breaths you took when you were feeling particularly anxious. On a day when it feels like your heart is constantly racing, coming back to those calm breaths can keep your anxiety from winning the battle and taking over.

I’ve found a broad definition works best for defining what can qualify as a good moment. The vagueness leaves enough possibility for a good moment to be almost anything, even if you need a magnifying glass to see it. It doesn’t matter what it is. A good moment simply has to be enough for you to go to sleep that night knowing the day wasn’t all terrible.

Think small. Like the first sips of a vanilla latte. While it’s the perfect temperature of hot, before espresso, milk, and foam start to separate. Or the softness of your dog’s fur under your fingers when you pet him. The steady rise and fall of his breathing below your hand.

Hard days happen. But a hard day is not all that different from any other kind of day. It is still a series of seconds, minutes, and hours. It’s still just hundreds of unique moments, making up one whole day. And somewhere in there, there is enough room for every moment to not be quite the same as the one before it and the one after.

Even our very worst days have space for a good moment. Sometimes all we need to do is close our eyes and take a deep breath to find it.