A Bad Day

A Bad Day

It had been a bad day.

At times, it had seemed like a bad life. That’s what it was, when it was a bad day, after bad day, after bad day. They all blur together in a haze of negativity that is hard to peek out from. Hard to grasp at any of the tendrils of positivity when there was a distinct lack of the emotion present in your life.

Lately, or at least for a while, it has only been a consensus of bad days. One thing piling up after the other; the speeding fine, I got on the way to the job that lets me go three days later. Those sorts of bad days when the barista gave me the wrong type of milk, and I spent the afternoon with shooting pains wracking my stomach, as I hunched over in the bathroom – wondering why on earth I didn’t complain earlier, when I watched the barista using the wrong sort of milk. “It’s fine,” I would think as I watched it happen, I didn’t want to ruin the workers day by making them start over. I had seen moments before a Manager yelling at a different employee for messing up too many orders. I didn’t want anyone else to suffer the same treatment, a small ray of sunshine in that morning. “I’ll survive with normal milk. My Lactose Intolerance isn’t even that bad.”

If you’d just spoken up, maybe it wouldn’t have ended up being a bad day. If you’d had slowed down, perhaps you wouldn’t be speaking to the tune of a monetary sum you couldn’t afford – that’s why it was a bad day.

It was the curse of human nature that others didn’t, or couldn’t recognise when you’re having a bad day. Greeting each one, one after the other, with a fake smile, and a practiced lie, you couldn’t admit that in fact, it was a bad day. The friend across the street being so wrapped up in their own misery, couldn’t quite see that they weren’t the only ones having a bad day – that they also couldn’t find any positivity.

It was a common human ailment, to not embrace the positives in life, only focusing on the negative – it was why small acts of kindness when done right, can alter the course of a bad day, a bad week, or even a hard year.

On that morning on the brink of a ninth bad day, a string of disappointments, one after the other – small things too, things that added up. A headache followed by someone crashing into the rear of my car while getting the bad news at a café that the muffin I’d wanted all morning was already sold out. The other driver didn’t leave a note, of course they didn’t, I couldn’t help but think, my mind already made up that the day was going to be terrible.

I stood there, at the rear of my car, wondering how expensive the repairs would be – it looked expensive, a large dent, scratches on the paint, and the rear light had been smashed. More money that I didn’t have to spend, another thing to add on the list of ‘reasons it’s not a bad day, but a bad life’.

“Hello, is this your car?” a woman had called out, her hair had clearly also seen the stress of the day already, even though the day had just started. There was a smile on her face despite this, a sort of well-worn look, filled with good intentions. “I just wanted to let you know that I saw the car that hit yours. I copied down the number plate.”

It had been advantageous, that another person who had been walking past head down, while huddled in a jacket that they’d pulled tightly around their body, glanced up upon hearing the woman’s voice. They had discreetly looked at the damage on the car, and interjected. “We have a camera right over your car, if you like, I can get the footage for you from my manager.”

The woman had smiled, the person in the black jacket – clearly someone who worked in the café, had raised an eyebrow, nearly impatient to hear a response, as they tapped their foot against the darkened ground. Then it struck me, exactly what a small gesture of kindness actually was.

It was speaking up when you noticed someone else being disadvantaged (clearly, the guy who hit my car did not think that the lady who copied his number plate, or the café worker were in fact, providing any moments of kindness for him).

With their help however, I could get my car fixed without the large payout, and I went out of my way to ensure that other people also got an act of kindness too. We will never know when someone is having a bad day, a terrible week, or a horrible year – we also don’t know when the last time someone had done something so small, so inconsequential, to brighten their day.

It was how my Friday morning tradition began. As every morning I went through a Starbucks drive through, I would also pay for the person behind me too. A small act of kindness, a $5 token, can brighten someone’s bad day, fix their terrible week, and make their horrible year just a tad more bearable.

In the end, we are all only just human, and we all have bad days - but when we just remember that we aren’t the only ones who are in fact, having a bad day, that’s when the true beauty and kindness in the word starts to shine.