In the evening

I don’t know what to make of a particular day. Whether it would be best to lay it on a table, dissect its finer parts, in a strange search for meaning, or whether it would be in my best interest to see it less as a particular day than as yet another puzzle piece in an impossibly large mosaic that winds up being a picture of me.

I think what I’m getting at is that I don’t have a proclivity for gratitude. It was gratitude that the philosopher Epicurus held as the chief virtues, an ability to appreciate when we’ve got it good. This axiom presents problems when applied liberally to your average human being. You see, in short, I find a great many things satisfying, but only in a vague sense, as if something deeper was lying beneath. And, it was as if I am a child again, knowing that if I just keep digging I’ll discover a dinosaur bone, just one more shovelful will change everything.

I think it’s reasonable to argue that it is this same dissatisfaction, which has probably lead man to do things like build the Tower of Babel, walk on the moon (allegedly), and invent a monetary system that rewards people for taking risks on bad home mortgages. I mean, we do things, not always good things, but we do things. Would a great society of contented folks ever leave the garden?

Was today a good day? What makes for a good day, anyway? What sort of value judgments are inherent in that sort of question? Certainly the answer can’t be static. Well, I suppose for a Stoic it would be. Let’s discount the Stoics. I mean, on a certain day, say, a funeral, it would be a good day if you cried. Most days it’s probably good to laugh frequently, but you really can’t apply a particular rubric without losing something. And yet, if we’re to find out what constitutes a “good day,” some sort of system needs to be applied.

It’s too close to midnight to come up with anything definitive for now. Let’s try anecdotal: I walked into the room and peered down into the crib. Julian smiled up at me. I released his legs from the green blanket and watched him stretch out his limbs, this sweet and scaly little buddy. I open the window so the two of us can greet the morning. He smiles.