Unprofitable Days
December 23, 2017•312 words
I’m in a generally positive mood today. And I bring notice to this fact only because it is very easy to see, given previous posts, that this isn’t always the case.
A friend of mind was asking me how I felt recently after I had messaged him some weeks back about my apparent state of despair. I couldn’t recall what he was referring to, or what state I could have been in at all two weeks ago. He told me it was on December 12, that he sensed I was in a panic. Well, December 12 is meaningless. Unless…
Unless I keep a daily log of my days. Wonderful! Finally a use for my uselessness. So I looked up the day’s post for December 12, and indeed, it was my shortest post ever. I was in a pretty bad place.
Where has the time went? I do not recall deciding to be better since then, but alas—my spirit seems to have increased tenfold. What was the turning point? It must have happened during a blink.
Emerson writes:
If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know! We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere…
We never do quite feel ourselves grow. But take a look at you now. You’ve come a far way. The invisible growth that magically occurs in the interstices of your days: that is the fruit of life.