You Had a Bad Day
Well, though I can’t pronounce it
Still, I pray for equant equanimity.
That, like Francis, I repose in subtle spirit,
So vital to devout agility.
Artist Kelly Purkey must have read my mind! She said… “I’ve got 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made-up scenarios in my head that I’m stressing about for absolutely no logical reason.”
Case in point…
I just got off the phone with the perfect idiot!
And yes, the idiot was me.
I was in a phone conversation with an employee of a capitalist corporate crony contractor (Sorry, I’m still venting). After answering 1000 questions (five) to prove I wasn’t working for Vladimir Putin (making sure they had the right account) I showed the employee how rude and ungrateful I can be when I put my mind to it. It turns out that I had nothing to worry about.
So, why did I act that way?
I was having a bad day, that’s why!
I was a long way from what Francis de Sales calls equanimity of spirit.
Francis valued equanimity. Although not a word we weave into conversation easily, it has fulsome meaning in Salesian Spirituality. In Francis’ day, it was a new word—équanimité, easy to say in French. Around the year 1600, it was social slang for kind, mild, and the like. It was taken from the Latin word aequanimis, literally translated as “even-minded.” However, for Francis, it had deep roots in his optimism that humans can act in a world of difficulties with moral vigor and strength of character—in other words, virtuously.
He writes: “God continues the existence of this great world in a state of continual change…Man, is never in the same state, and his life upon this earth glides along like the waters, flowing and undulating in a perpetual diversity of movements, which sometimes lift him up by hope, sometimes depress him by fear, sometimes bend him to the right by consolation, sometimes to the left by affliction, and not one of his days, nor even one of his hours, is exactly like another.”
Thus, “we must endeavor to maintain a continual and inviolable equanimity amid so great a variety of occurrences.” (Introduction to the Devout Life)
Not all translations of The Introduction use the word equanimity. Nonetheless, you will find a meditative consideration of Part IV, Chapter 13, helpful for your equanimity of spirit. You will find what you must already know—that poise in the face of adversity is achieved only by confidently turning the day over to God who made it.
What, after all, is a bad day?
A bad day occurs (for me) when I fail to adjust to reality in a spirit of acceptance and gratefulness. The bad day is inevitable when I try to muscle through the day’s difficulties fueled by ego, instead of yielding to the Father’s providential will. It’s a type of blindness that takes me off course. Francis uses the beautiful metaphor of a ship at sea…
Although the ship may take whatever course one wishes, whether it sails to the East, or to the South or North, and whatever wind it is that carries it, yet its marine compass pays no attention to anything except its bright star and the pole.
That star, of course, is our soul’s “Creator, her Savior, her sole and sovereign Good.” (Introduction to the Devout Life)
If you need a little boost in the meantime, check out David Powter’s (2005), music video, Bad Day… (an oldie but goodie) Daniel Powter - Bad Day (Official Music Video).
Fr. Mark Plaushin, OSFS
Love. Learn. Serve.
Charlie Mike