So: you had a bad day?
When I was still at school, my parents introduced me to the work of one of the funniest comedians I have yet discovered: the Danish pianist, Victor Borge. From phonetic punctuation to his re-singing of the entirety of The Magic Flute, Borge had the most superb sense of comic timing, and this combined with his wonderful pianistic talent made him completely irresistible to me. I remember falling about laughing when he told the soprano Marilyn Mulvey, halfway through a performance of ‘Caro nome’ as the words were repeated, ‘You just said that’… and as she then zoomed up into a particularly virtuosic passage called, ‘I thought you had that fixed!’.
There was another sketch – a much quieter, shorter sketch, about his grandfather’s attempt to invent a soft drink that would make him a fortune. It was called 3-Up. This was not very successful, so he changed the recipe and sold it as 4-Up. Still no good. So he added some sugar and name it 5-Up. Finally, as a last-ditch attempt, he adjusted the formula again and produced 6-Up. When this also flopped, he finally gave up, and died. ‘Little did he know,’ Borge said sadly, ‘how close he came.’
We all go through times that feel a bit like this. There was a day this week for me in which everything that could possibly have gone wrong did indeed go wrong: the trains weren’t just late, they were HOURS late; they were too full to board; it was raining; I couldn’t get through to the people I was supposed to meet to tell them I’d be late; my computer wouldn’t start; my tablet hadn’t saved work I’d spent hours doing the night before… on and on it went. It sucked. A lot. I lost time, money, patience, enthusiasm, and work.
But there was something else, too. It’s December, it’s cold and wet and dark, and for all that Christmas is not too far around the corner, this can cause as much additional stress (even if you’re not a carol singer) as it can give you something nice to aim for. As I stood fiddling with my mobile trying to report the train delay, report my lateness to class, and figure out how on earth to get a journey refund, I felt so overwhelmed by how inhuman so many mechanisms in our daily lives now are, that a huge wave of exhaustion washed over me and I wondered why on earth we all bother. I was going to be stressed, tired, damp and three hours late, and all I could do was pass this information on to a series of more or less automated systems which didn’t care. And it was all the more miserable, of course, because it’s December and I’m already running on empty.
Amid the assorted collections of ‘inspirational quote’ posters that go past on Facebook and Twitter, there was one which caught my eye and which, regardless of whether or not it really was Franklin D. Roosevelt who said it, is worth remembering. It goes: ‘When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.’ Sometimes, things are terrible, and you don’t have the energy or brain space to cope with it. It may not be because of a particularly dramatic reason, either. The vagaries of our existence can be mundane, uninteresting, lacking in appropriate drama or seriousness. A late train? Not exactly the stuff of James Bond films, is it? But it doesn’t actually matter what it is, if it’s the thing that sends you out to the end of your rope.
Still, it’s crucial to tie that knot and hang on. To do so might take back-up: friends to come and help, or simply be understanding that you can’t make it to something because you’re too done in by everything else. Or family being prepared to listen to all the bad things and make appropriate sympathetic noises. Actually, telling someone how crap everything has been can make it instantly better. It’s why we should share bad news as well as good, answer ‘how are you?’ honestly without being embarrassed if the answer isn’t ‘super!’, and remember that we are all allowed to be people with difficult days or relationships or situations rather than having to adhere to some kind of glossy magazine advert version of ourselves for the benefit of everyone else.
So here it is. I had a bad day (a phrase none of us can now use without conjuring up images of Daniel Powter and his silly beanie), I’m too tired, I was grumpy at people, my friends and family were amazing and listened to me complaining about stuff, and then I took advantage of the understanding of those close to me to clear a day to relax and recuperate. It’ll be alright, but it doesn’t actually have to alright immediately for the benefit of everyone else. If you’re feeling similarly stressed and tired, please remember that. Hang onto the knot, call for help, and give yourself time. Things will be looking up (7-Up, perhaps?) before you know it.
