210. Go Ahead, I Dare You

Tell me about your day

Go ahead, tell me how you’re having a bad day.

Tell me how you woke up late. Or how you stubbed your toe.
Tell me your coffee was too sweet or too strong.

Tell me how your kid was defiant. How you yelled and screamed.

Tell me how your meeting this morning lasted too long.
How your life seems so hard.
How everybody is treating you so mean.

Go ahead.

Tell me about that person you don’t know who said something you don’t care about to someone you don’t respect.

Tell me how it’s not fair that you didn’t get that thing you know you deserve.
How the entire world is acting against you and it’s struck a chord on your very last nerve.

Tell me about your fear that you’re not well-liked.
Or that you don’t know what to do.

Tell me how you’re scared because it seems everyone around you does everything better than you.

Go ahead, I dare you.

Tell me all the things that you can’t stand today.
The people.
The place.
The lack of personal space.
The desire to push push push yourself further away.

Tell me what’s got you frustrated.
Is it that you don’t feel heard? You don’t feel respected?
Or is it that you just don’t feel?

Is it that you want to scream but the vault in your throat is locked and you can’t find the key?

Do you want to punch the wall but it disappears the moment you take a swing?

Are you frustrated that the thing that needs to get done isn’t done and the clock is tick tick-ticking towards pending doom. Towards a sudden…

BOOM!

Or is that the tick-tock of the timebomb strapped to your sanity that’s about to explode?

If only somebody could tell you the code to diffuse it. If only you had the power to choose it.

Go ahead. Tell me how you’re having a bad day.
Because here is what I’m going to tell you.

When you’re on your deathbed with your final thoughts coursing through your head, today is not one of them.

It’s not even in the top ten.

I will tell you that you are alive and that you can breathe and that 192 billion people in human history can’t say that. They can’t say anything. Their dreams are over. Their opportunity is dead.

I will tell you that I don’t care if the answer is yes or no, stop or go. You always have a choice. Take it.

I don’t care if it’s happiness or hate. At least you have a feeling. Understand it.

I don’t care if the glass is half empty or half full. Be grateful you have water. Drink it.

I don’t care if the sun is shining or you’re in pitch blackness. At least you have air.

So breathe.

Because there are no bad days on the outside. The bad day is only inside your head. And you - only you - have the power to change it.

There are no curses just good fortune. And you - only you - have the power to choose how to view it.

There are children without parents, without food, without hope, who are playing with nothing in a barren nowhere yet they still can laugh.
They still can smile.
They still can find joy in being alive.

So exhale the pain out of your mind.
Exhale the frustration out of your soul.
Exhale the darkness out of the light.

Exhale.

Because right now you have the power to live your life as the person you want to be.

So be it.

*This article was inspired by the incredible poetry of Rudy Francisco