What is a good day? While doing a junior
surgical job a senior colleague told me what a good day was for a surgical
resident. ‘Don’t kill the patients and don’t sleep with them either’. He used a
different grade of English which I have translated here. Permanently tired due
to long on call sessions he had set his sights low and simple. It worked for
him.
I recall a line from Ice Cube’s song It was
a Good day-
Today
I didn’t even have to use my AK
I
gotta sat, it was a good day
That song was sounded funny at the time but
reading the lyrics today almost brings tears to my eyes. The picture depicted
was one in which murder and trouble was the daily expectation and if it did not
happen then it was a good day.
It all boils down to expectations in the
end. If the day could meet the expectations or even exceed them, then it is a
good day. Anything less is was a bad day.
I noticed myself feeling a particular day
hadn’t gone well and I started to ask myself questions about the exact matrix I
used in coming to that conclusion. It so happens that I had no objective method
for assessing the day. It was purely subjective and dependent on the way I felt
my interactions with patients went towards the end of the day. The things that
did not go well were remembered while the routine tasks that go well were
promptly forgotten.
It was not hard to figure out that
something untoward was bound to happen most days and if I focus on these things
and exaggerate them, I would drift out of balance and start to label each day
as a ‘bad day’ due to isolated incidences.
There was a time I told myself that making
it to bed at night alive and achieving just one thing no matter how small was
enough for me. I soon forgot this mantra which looked as if it lacked ambition
and pressurised myself into looking for difficult things accomplished each day
to maintain that sense of having lived a day to be proud of.
I think I am back to square one now. Making
it to my bed at night alive with food in my stomach and a smile on my face is
good enough for me. I will always work hard and be creative as it is too late
to change that now. It is the simple things in life that make for a good day.
There is no peace of mind like the children finishing their food and having
dirty nappies a few hours later. That is a good day.
Trying to find fulfilment in just the work
place is not enough. The work place will continue long after you have left.
Family is more important. If the family are having a good day then it means my
day is good. No matter how good work is, people don’t take annual leave and go
on holiday with work colleagues but with family.
Driven people and high achievers can be a miserable
lot sometimes as this subset are sometimes defined by their work. They are on
top but stay up all night thinking about how they can remain at the top. It is
a bit ironic seeing that everyone dies and leaves both the wealth and the
status behind.
There is no top man or high achiever in the
cemetery.
Everyone wants to make significant impact
in their work and continue to be productive and efficient working with friendly
motivated people. But sometimes we might
feel that we are fire- fighting all day long;, running from one urgent low
priority task to another. There might be bosses we dislike or working practices
that we hate but have to work with.
We must however remember that we have only
one life to live and we have to make the best of each day.
The days build up to weeks and months and
before you know it you might be having a bad year.
Each person should write out clearly what a
good day would look like for them and strive to make the various elements on
that list come to past. Writing things out will make it easy not to miss the
easily forgotten items that are essential and which we would be grateful to
achieve.
