Your day is as good or as bad as you want it to be!

The alarm clock, the most unpleasant and loudest sound on earth, jolted me out of my sleep and ushered me into yet another Monday morning. Too tired to open my eyes fully, I glanced at the clock and decided that it would not be harmful if I could just catch a couple of winks more of blissful sleep. When I finally got into wakefulness it was well past 7:30AM!

With a deep sense of urgency, I woke my kids, I am sure my voice sounded unpleasant to them too. When they were finally awake, they began fighting over who should get hold of the toothpaste first! My clock was ticking and I had to hurry through preparing a simple breakfast, getting my kids to hurry up with their morning routines, bring out their uniforms and shoes, ensure that they got to eat something, check if they had all their books, pack their snacks and water.. the list seemed to be endless, especially when the time allocated for all the tasks was merely 30 minutes! I tried to relax and take deep breaths and do one thing at a time.

Just as I was struggling with getting things organized, I heard a loud smash. A few hurried steps to the hall brought me face to face with disaster! My son had dropped his glass of milk, breaking the lovely glass tumbler into a million pieces and drenching the couch and him with milk. I was being pushed to the edge and I just blew up!

I screamed at him for being careless before bringing out a new set of uniform and asking him to change. He was obviously upset and began crying, which only aggravated my anger. I pushed the bowl of cornflakes and told him to hurry up with it, using the same tone. The atmosphere was tense. My kids did not have a good Monday morning. It was too late to let them finish their breakfast. So I rushed them to the end of the street, from where the school van would pick them up. Unfortunately, the school van had left by then! Too bad!! I had to walk them over to school now, how I wish I had taken that extra effort to learn to ride a bike! When I finally reached school, I had to get special permission to get them in, as they were late! My son walked into school without turning back to say goodbye, eyes still misty, probably hungry from missing breakfast and tense that he was late for the classes!

I had to rush back home and rush to office for that important meeting that was scheduled early in the morning. I almost ran all the way back home to pick up my handbag and mobile and rush out. Now, left at the mercy of the auto drivers of the garden city, I tried to focus on the tasks I had to accomplish prior to the start of the very important meeting, glancing nervously at my watch, hoping that it would just stop for a few minutes and give me the much needed break.

As expected, I was delayed for the meeting. The tasks prior to the meeting had to be left behind as there was no time, I ran into the meeting room, without the key inputs that I was supposed to have generated earlier in the day. No prizes for guessing the outcome of the meeting!

My whole day was ruined!

I returned home in the evening, cursing my day, only to find that my son had had a very bad day in school too. He was hungry and upset and still refrained from talking to me!

As I prepared my evening cup of coffee, I tried to look back at what went wrong since morning, what was the root cause for the bad day, was it the alarm clock? Was it the urge to sleep a few minutes more? The kids? The glass that was broken? The spilt milk? The traffic? The fact that I did not know to drive? Or was it just ME?

The results were all over the place.” I” was responsible for all that transpired on that day. The one minute “blow up”, caused the schedule to become totally messed up. Retracing my steps, I thought of how I could have made this day better for me and my kids. Isnt it true that people who fly into rage always make a bad landing! All that was needed to make my day better was a minute of patience!

We cannot attempt to change the circumstances that we are in, but certainly we can adapt ourselves to suit the circumstances. We choose whether we want our day to be good or bad, fruitful or boring!

Your day is as good or as bad as you want it to be!!