Has anyone actually ever said that to you? I hope not. If they have, I am in full agreement with the dude from Office Space. I think you reserve the right to whoop someone's ass for saying something like that, it's just the epitome of 'why are you talking then' phrases. Sometimes, nothing needs to be said. Sometimes, just don't even say anything, because anything you say is just going to make a negative contribution to the conversation.
Do you get tired of hearing the same phrases over and over, and you start to look at them really closely to try to understand what they even mean? I can't stop myself from doing this lately. A guy at the grocery store in front of me the other day told his wife and kids that they could 'kill two birds with one stone'. And for whatever reason, I pictured what it actually looks like when you kill even one bird with a stone. And it's actually a bit screwed up.
It's like, dude, why did you kill that bird? That bird did nothing to deserve that, what are you doing? You want to kill another one after that? And do it with the same stone? So you're possibly psychotic and lazy at the same time? Or does that mean you kill the first bird, walk over, pick up the same stone, and then kill another one? Somehow that's less impressive. Maybe you're killing more than one bird because of the size of the stone. If I lob a meteor the size of a football stadium at a wooded forest, I'll probably hit a few things, birds, squirrels, might even get a deer or two. But no one is going to turn to me and say "Good shot" over it.
So I guess details like that matter a bit.
Here's something that I think we overuse all the time:
"Have a great day!"
Again, I know I'm really turning up the microscope on this one, but what does that actually, like ACTUALLY mean? Because a lot of us have really great lives in the first place. We have jobs, we have loving families, or families that aren't plagued with violence and incest that we can deal with most of the time. We live in a part of the world that currently has all the basic resources needed to sustain life. We have things that entertain us that we don't even need, and yet we can allow them to bring us stress and interrupt otherwise boring great sufficient happiness. If you've recently felt angry or disappointed because of the result of a sports competition, or you were let down by a musical performance or musical album, or you are currently feeling unfulfilled because you finished a binge of a tv show and don't have a new one yet, then yeah, maybe life sucks, but on a much more basic level maybe life is going great and you are able to focus and dwell on details like that. If you didn't have to kill your own food to feed yourself and seven others using a spear and a rope, clothed only with the hide of the last thing you killed with that same spear and rope, you just might have more going in the right direction than you realize.
So when you say 'Have a great day", how are you saying it? Are you saying, continue having a mostly great life without interruption? Have an average day of excellence? Or are you trying to say, even for the great life you're living with no real problems and a ton to be envied by people in your own life, you need to go out there and just kill that standard by having whatever a great day is to YOU. Go out and finish first in a marathon, and learn Cantonese Chinese, and write an award winning screenplay, and foil a terrorist attack, and cook a perfect souffle, and then travel to Paris and have people excited to take pictures of you while you're the visitor in Paris, and then come back and have lunch and then keep going after that. Just get out there and kill it, have a great day to what is already a great life! Go, go now! Why aren't you having a great day life in this moment?! You're disobeying my enthusiasm and I won't have it!
What if your normal days are amazing and this great day that you're supposed to have is for normal people? You know, like you're used to mansions and cruises and champagne lifestyle and you have a great day for a blue collar dude with a trailer, a pickup and a case of Bud light? If you have one standard and the other comes at you, well, can you definitively say that ISN'T a shitty day? And I'm not talking shit about the case of beer. Bud light days can be awesome. Bud light days can bring great perspective. The mornings after Bud light days can also bring a requiem for why you move on from Bud light days at some point. Just like the day or so after the champagne lifestyle might not be great when you get the bill for all that shit and realize, 'Now I'm broke and have to go back to Bud light days for the rest of my stupid but still basically good life'.
I got the idea after listening to Ice Cube's "It was a Good Day". For those of you unfamiliar, it's a 90's gangsta rap song about a guy in South Central LA who takes you through what is considered in his world a good day. And he mentions things like how he played basketball and did well, had some good food with his family, won money in a card game, went on a date and got laid, his favorite sports teams won, more good food, got some drinks, ect., things that are relatable to many people out there, regardless of background. But then he mentions other things in his world that didn't happen, that also contributed to a good day. Like the fact that he didn't have to shoot anyone, and he didn't get shot or shot at. At one point he notes that he had to stop at a red light, and no one was waiting at that red light to try and rob him. Cool. To many of us, it's not just that "yeah it's good that no attempted robbery occurred", but more, "Holy shit, do you have to worry about that kind of thing regularly?" But to Ice Cube in the song, it's like, "Hey, nobody I know got killed today. Thumbs up."
Maybe the amount of focus we put on mundane things is way too much. Maybe we're using words like great too much. We call our days great. We call our jobs great. We have great cars, great families, great weekends, great grandmothers, great escapes, great walls, great balls of fire. Please, spare me your balls of fire, they are usually quite shoddy and ordinary. You gotta really dig deep to impress me with your balls of fire. If you don't have massive balls that are completely engulfed in flames that are burning everything that they touch, then I challenge your definition of what it means to have great balls of fire. I have now gone on this point for too long and will move on.
We definitely use great for things like food constantly. I had a coworker at a previous job go on and on about this 'amazing' burrito he had for lunch that day. He described everything about it, from the meat, to the cheese, and the toppings of guacamole and peppers and chilies and pico de gallo, and the way it was wrapped up and toasted, and the way it smelled, and how satisfying it was for him and how he doesn't think he'll ever have another burrito that good ever again. And just messing around, one of the female coworkers there at the same time said, "So then I guess it's all downhill from here, huh?" And I got a glimpse of the moment his face sank just a little bit. It was quick and subtle, but I think he honestly had a moment of consideration, where he thought maybe that six dollar burrito was the best he was ever gonna do, and everything in life had built him to that moment and now nothing else was going to measure up to it ever again.
But that wasn't quite the end of it. It would turn out later that this same burrito may have made a second appearance. I can't say for certain what else this dude ate, but the bathroom was uninhabitable shortly thereafter for most of the rest of the day after he paid it a visit. And it was definitely him, because I had the misfortune of being in the vicinity when it happened and I saw the look on his face when he left that bathroom. It was one of those faces where you don't yet know how terrible of a thing you just done. It looked kind of like this:
Suffice it to say, the next 10 people to use that bathroom had horrible days, or had their days severely downgraded, thanks to this god damn burrito that caused 10 seconds of euphoria to this admittedly aloof useless hippie type. And yes, I get that this could be taking several things out of context just to support my point here in an unnecessary way. Thousands of other things could have made other people's days shitty, and this guy may have just had his own personal Victor Green moment that he hopes no one ever finds out about, yada yada. And to all that I say-
...meh. I choose to believe it was the burrito that made all of this mayhem happen. And it's likely that this was not a great day for anyone involved. So let's go with that.
Maybe it's not about having great days. Maybe it's just about eliminating the awful ones. So let's try that. Go out there and don't have a shitty day. Let's raise the average rating of your days to where you don't even have to worry about having good or great days, because they already are that. Don't have a shitty day, everybody.
Until next time.
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