Perfect Day English Metacognition etapa 3.

“THIS IS MY PERFECT DAY”

Have you ever considered what your perfect day would be? Have you thought, oh, my perfect day would be to wake up, get a massage, be fed delicious food and hot perfectly brewed coffee in bed, take a hot bath, then leisurely stroll through your pampered day and then watch the sunset with a loved one while drinking hot cocoa and looking perfect all the while? And has your perfect day ever really happened? Does that disappoint you? Wouldn’t it be nice if your perfect day could happen today? Or tomorrow? Or how about every single day? (if you say no, you aren’t human…)

I have given this much thought of late. I’ve even tried to put it down on paper. But it never looks like a fantasy day like what I described above. It looks more like: 5 am wake up, take dog for a walk on the beach (ok that is fantasy), have a cup of coffee and read the bible. 7am eat breakfast. 8 am go to work (yep, I include work). 12 have lunch with my husband. 5pm come home (energetic) and prepare gourmet dinner. 7pm whole family helps clean the house. 8pm kids go to bed. 9pm I go to bed and read. 10pm my husband comes to bed and well…

Yet as sober a “perfect day” as that might be it still never happens. Except for the beach, I keep thinking that this day is perfectly attainable. Except for, you know, life. Life. It happens. There is more homework. The kids don’t want to help clean up anything.  I stay up too late reading Facebook or Pinterest and then drag myself out of bed at 7, lucky to shower before work. I work through lunch and have the life sucked out of my soul by a couple of patients and come him exhausted. Gourmet meal plan out the window and I beg my husband to make pizza.  A couple of glasses of wine later, stuffed with carbs, we stumble to bed and pass out. Sounds swell, huh?

I imagined when I was 41, approaching 42, that I would be traveling the world. My children almost grown and independent. I’d go out to dinner at will and have time to kayak to my heart’s content. Then God said, “Let there be twins and celiac disease.” (No, I don’t think God caused me to have celiac disease but he might have had a hand in the whole twin thing… And no, I am not saying God actually said anything to me. I am not a prophet. Just being creative there. Wow, that needed a lot of explanation.)  Well, that little pipe dream went bye-bye.

Now, I have to include two little girls and their daddy in my perfect day. Going out to dinner invokes all kinds of dread and fear about what I can eat without getting sick. This girl can’t live on salad!! Travel is now fraught with food anxiety and anxiety over what to do with small children. Relaxing on a beach is nearly impossible when you are just trying to keep your children from drowning. I’m responsible like that.

So is it a bad thing that we don’t get our “perfect” day? Should we even bother? What’s the point?

Well, there is a lot of talk about simplifying, becoming minimalist, decluttering, etc., so you can eventually only have to deal with what is really important to you. It’s a means to lives get to living out that “perfect” day. Sell everything! Go live out of a van! Just go and be! Free yourself from the bondage of mortgages and property taxes and responsibility. Is that really a possibility for most of us? I kind of don’t think so.

I think we can all be more conscious of our daily decisions and consumption. I think that we could all live with less quite comfortably. And I think that maybe that saying to “live simply so that others may simply live” is pretty valid IF by not consuming something we in turn help out someone else meet their basic needs. If we are just living “simply” in some areas so that we can have more money for other stuff we want to do like, say, travel more, then it’s just something we are doing for ourselves not someone else. It’s not a moral decision to do that, it’s just a lifestyle one. No better or worse than any other lifestyle. See the difference?

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