“ It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”–Judith Voirst
“It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” 😥
Years ago, when I taught Kindergarten students, I used to read to them a book entitled, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” by Judith Viorst. It is the story of a boy, Alexander, who is really having a lousy day. He wakes up with gum in his hair, slips on his skateboard, is corrected by his teacher at school, discovers he is only someone’s third best friend, and has no dessert in his lunch–to name only a few of the bad events of Alexander’s day. As Alexander’s day worsens, he quips, “I think I’ll move to Australia.”
For my young students, the book provided a springboard for rich conversations centering around two concepts. First, students shared/compared their own bad day experiences. Through the process of hearing each other’s bad day examples, they discovered and affirmed that everyone has bad days. Secondly, it allowed students the opportunities to discuss strategies for handling, or at the very least, surviving terrible days.
Broken pieces💔
I am sometimes reminded of this story when I am having one of those “terrible, horrible” days. This was the case, in fact, on an evening of a very long and disheartening day. By the time I arrived at home, I couldn’t wait to console myself with a few pieces of dark chocolate from a bar I kept squirreled away in a kitchen cabinet.
The bar is typically divided into six rows of five pieces each. I typically break off a row and put the rest of the bar away. Then, I snap one piece off at a time, savoring each piece, allowing it to slowly melt in my mouth before moving on to the next. It is a silly ritualistic habit, but one in which I take great comfort, especially at the end of a tough day.
Only on this particular evening, I slid my finger down the back side of the wrapper to remove the adhesive, folded back the paper and inner foil, only to discover that my beloved bar was shattered. It was not symmetrically broken along the lines produced by the manufacturer. Instead, the bar was broken in a random spider web of lines that could never be put back together–certainly not into the neat symmetrical rows to which my methodical habit was accustomed.
I stood there for a stunned minute or two wondering if I could even eat such a mess, much less enjoy it. How would I know how much to eat? What if I ate more (or less) than I normally would? Did I even want to eat it if I couldn’t break it into perfect little pieces? I know, it sounds so silly and irrational, but at that moment, things were not going as I had hoped and expected. Even my chocolate bar could not be relied upon on this day! Maybe, like Alexander, I should move to Australia!
Going for Broke🚦
After debating my dilemma, I took a leap of faith and decided to, ahem, go for broke! I grabbed a paper towel, folded it in half, and gently placed upon it a few oddly shaped pieces, all the while feeling conflicted if I still had the “right” amount. Pushing the rest of the pieces together enough to refold the paper and foil, I stowed the remaining chocolate bar away for another time. Then, I sat down with my herbal tea, sighed, and placed one of those broken, unsymmetrical pieces of chocolate in my mouth.
Much to my surprise, an alarm did not sound. The couch, upon which I sat, did not collapse. A sinkhole did not open within my family room and send me, and the room’s furniture, spiraling down a black hole towards an alternate universe. The world, in fact, kept spinning on its axis. Most surprising of all, the chocolate still tasted heavenly!
While this is all good dramatized fun, sometimes “no good very bad days” are not so silly. Life’s pieces can sometimes get broken like my chocolate bar with breaks that don’t seem to make any sense. These events feel like seismic jagged lines that you know from the onset will never be put back together. We rail against the unhappy change, resisting and pulling as if engaged in our own personal tug-of-war with life. Often, we create so much strain, we physically, mentally, and/or emotionally hurt to the point of breaking ourselves. We simply can’t see beyond the broken pieces.
Nudged in a new direction🔄
These are the times that force us to look at life with new eyes. We are nudged, not so gently, to rely upon our faith and listen to that inner voice urging us on. Life is still before us. Only now, it is now arranged differently than we had hoped and expected, but life remains nonetheless.
It is only when we release our grip and accept there is nothing to do–the pieces are broken and will not be reassembled. This acceptance doesn’t mean we are powerless, it simply means we are moving forward, in faith, in a newly arranged direction that isn’t as straight as we had hoped, but travel-worthy nonetheless. Gradually, one step, or one piece, at a time, we begin to see the pieces of life can still be assembled.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but over time, a new way of being emerges that somehow begins to make a new kind of sense, one that had not been imagined, but can work. When the tug-of-war-with life rope is dropped and acceptance moves in, we begin to see that somehow the collection of the broken pieces can still taste sweet, perhaps not the same, but still sweet. It is then that our hearts begin to mend, we find newfound strength in our new life-shape–even if we were to move to Australia.
Steph Simply 