Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt:  What is one thing you can do that would make today worthwhile? What’s stopping you from getting started right now?   (Author: Jessica Dang)

Free Day

Busyness

As one who believes in turning activities into actions and who is always busy, taking a free day is one thing that would make today worthwhile to me.  Unlike a vacation, a free day is an unplanned act of doing anything I want from the time I wake up.   It’s ignoring a schedule.  It’s breaking out of a routine.  It’s time for focusing on what matters to me instead of the matters of others.   And it would be worthwhile because I would take it without feelings of guilt or fear of wasting my time.

In a fast world, we lead busy lives.  It’s evident whether doing good or up to no good. Those with jobs are busy working, those without are busy looking for work and those dangling in the middle are busy worrying about life.   Everyone is busy and much of that busyness is wasting time, waiting for something worthwhile or wishing for someone to make things better.  There are days when I’m doing a lot, moving constantly and going nowhere.  Is it worthwhile?

For me, one free day is worth more than a hundred busy ones.   A random decision to take a single day to relax—think, read, discover newness, satisfy a lingering, or plot a future—is worthwhile.   Do what I want.  No “to do” or “must do” lists.  No guilty burdens.  When the day ends, close my eyes, go to sleep, wake the next day and have no regrets.   I exhale feeling refreshed.

Yesterday is gone.  Today, the  busy “haints” (ghosts) got a hold of me, as old folks say.   I have too much work to do.  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take that free day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s entire quote:

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities
no doubt have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with
your old nonsense.

This day is all that is
good and fair.
It is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on yesterdays.