3 December 2022
One day is as all days. I read that line this past summer and made a note to put it on the dissection table. Today that dissection begins.
The first meaning is that waiting for the right day is the wrong approach. That’s a difficult premise to accept if you buy into the Stages of Change (see blogs from August-September 2021 for a refresher). Those stages hold that we move through precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. As has been stated often, moving from one to the other requires sufficient ego strength—enough faith in oneself, others, and/or the world—to take that leap. That faith doesn’t exist at equal intensity every day of the year. In fact, that faith wavers wildly from one day to the next. As such, one day is not as all days.
The second meaning is that we are mistaken when we think ourselves superior to our relatively unsophisticated ancestors who, for goodness’ sake, didn’t even have cell phones! This view, that all days are as one, bears more truth in that human beings of all periods probably had to deal with parents, siblings, homelives, education or training, romance, child rearing, aging, and death. Our technological prowess does not bring any guarantee of greater wisdom, efficacy, or well-being. So, we’ll accept that reading of one day being as all days in that the human experience has a sameness through time. And that sameness says a lot about what’s fundamental and what’s not, in a human life.
The third meaning, which combines the prior two, is that life has some immutable attributes which we can choose to face and integrate—or choose to evade (and get whack-a-moleish with). This was probably the main thrust of the source I read. In this sense, coming to terms with one’s fundamental challenges needs to be faced before they can be superseded. From that perspective, any day is a good day to begin that more honest relationship with oneself, others, and the world.
For example, in addiction we deny, in trauma we avoid. In both, we move away from the immutable realities of day-to-day life. Let’s look at those day-to-day realities. Grocery shopping, winter tire swapping, paying our insurance bills, paying the gas bill, showing up for work, being there for your parents and children. Most of those realities assume a middle-class station in life but assuming most of us are there or working to get there, these become the daily grind. (According to the OECD, 2019, Canada’s approximate class breakdown is upper, 10%; middle 60%; lower, 18%; and poor, 12%.)
If you are no longer able to face the tedium of the basics of transportation, rent or mortgage payments, and keeping the larder stocked, each day is becoming less and less like all days. Which brings us around to a realization: One day is as all days only if you are still in the game. If you’ve started to check out, each day becomes a day of lesser or greater withdrawal from the world as a means of dampening down the pain.
With that realization, feeling that one day is as all days, becomes a value worthy of pursuit. If one day really is as all days, you are in very good shape, that is, you are able to make the decisions of a healthy, rational agent pretty much when called upon to do so. I didn’t expect or see this coming, at least not on a conscious level, which explains why I write on pretty much all days. I hope that if you are reading this and realizing that one of your days is not as all days, that this blog will be an eye-opener. For those of you whose days are similar, well done.
For the more scholarly readers, this probably comes from Romans: 14:5, “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (King James Version, italics original).
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He works as a supervised psychotherapist at CMHA-Hamilton where his primary focus is trauma. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
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