Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Y          E          S
There will be Bad DAYS
to be had
to be overcome
to be experienced
to be intimately known
to be.          .          .
ALL WAYS
TO BE

So the next time you feel totally shattered
once again
MONDAY MORNING
or not
R  E  F  L  E  C   T:
(these)

Words of encouragement for your inevitable bad day. A compilation of worldwide YouTube content, the crowd-sourced documentary “Life in a Day” by Kevin Macdonald, and local footage by Jon Goodgion. Audio is the spoken word poem “Instructions For a Bad Day” by Shane Koyczan. Rights remain to respective owners. Here is the poem in written form:

“There will be bad days. Be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm slowly now. Let go.

Be confident. Know that “now” is only a moment, and that if “today” is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, “today” will have ended.
Be gracious. Accept each extended hand offered, to pull you back from the “somewhere” you cannot escape.

Be diligent. Scrape the gray sky clean. Realize every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the Truth – and the Truth is, whether we see them or not, the Sun and Moon are still there and always there is Light.
Be forthright. Despite your instinct to say “it’s alright, I’m okay” – be honest. Say how you feel without fear or guilt, without remorse or complexity.

Be lucid in your explanation, be sterling in your oppose. If you think for one second no one knows what you’ve been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone – that Pain is part of the Human Condition, and that alone makes you a legion.

We hungry underdogs, we risers with dawn, we dissmisser’s of odds, we pressers of on – we will station ourselves to the calm. We will hold ourselves to the steady, be ready player one. Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough choices, your voice is your weapon, your thoughts ammunition – there are no free extra men, be aware that as the instant now passes, it exists now as then. So be a mirror reflecting yourself back, and remembering the times when you thought all of this was too hard and you’d never make it through.
Remember the times you could have pressed quit – but you hit continue.

Be forgiving. Living with the burden of anger, is not living. Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.

Be persistent. Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement, beautiful – because it doesn’t know it’s not supposed to grow there.

Be resolute. Declare what you accept as true in a way that envisions the resolve with which you accept it. If you are having a good day, be considerate. A simple smile could be the first-aid kit that someone has been looking for.

If you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can – do more. There will be bad days, Times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out. There will be moments when the drought of joy seems unending. Instances spent pretending that everything is alright when it clearly is not, check your blind spot. See that love is still there, be patient.

Every nightmare has a beginning, but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you. I am calling you “friend”. Make us comprehend the urgency of your crisis. Silence left to its own devices, breed’s silence. So speak and be heard. One word after the next, express yourself and put your life in the context – if you find that no one is listening, be loud. Make noise. Stand in poise and be open. Hope in these situations is not enough and you will need someone to lean on. In the unlikely event that you have no one, look again.

Everyone is blessed with the ability to Listen. The Deaf will hear you with their Eyes. The Blind will see you with their Hands. Let your Heart fill their news-stands, let them read all about it. Admit to the bad days, the impossible nights. Listen to the insights of those who have been there, but come back. They will tell you; you can stack misery, you can pack disappear you can even wear your sorrow – but come tomorrow you must change your clothes.

Everyone knows Pain. We are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to now will belong soon to then. That when someone asks you “how was your day”, realize that for some of us, it’s the only way we know how to say “be calm”.

Loosen your grip, opening each palm, slowly now – let go.”

Go ahead.          .          .
Clear your throat
Rub your eyes
drink deeply from the cup
that endlessly reminds you
that Bad Days may be a plenty
but those are the days
you suck down
and spit out
(again and again and again and again and again and again and again and.  .  .  .)

H A V E     Y O U ?

Have you ever been asleep and actually having a very vivid dream

that you can actually wake yourself ?

.          .          .and   really   d i d ?

I was at an old, run down country home with the only thing worse than the cracked, paint-chipped exterior being the bare, unkept inside.

I was in the bedroom with a bare-lamp-shadeless bulb flickering on and off. I was talking on my cell phone and there was a knock at the front door.

Who would be knocking at the front door of this old, out in the middle of no where farm house?

I answered the door and there was an older, bigger man in big overalls and he was trying to come in; I walked out with him on the porch and stood with him on the porch.

He asked me about the “MUD BUGS” that were flying around and sticking to the string door.  And before I could answer him, there was a policeman that came from around the side of the house and he asked me if  “OVER-ALLS” was bothering me. . .And before I could answer him there was a large number of men with guns who came around from the other side of the house where there were a bunch of trees and bushes.  The police officer had his back to them and didn’t see them coming toward all of us.

THIS    WAS    NOT    GOING    TO    END    WELL

.     .     .I wasn’t going to have any of this.

Even before I yelled to the Officer to look out

I   DECIDED  TO   WAKE   UP  !

and   I   DID

My heart was pounding and I was sweaty and a little out of breath but

I       WAS     AWAKE

Has that ever happened to you?

The Dream doesn’t haunt me.

I didn’t go back to sleep very shortly after that and began where it left off.   .   .

I slept great the rest of the night.

But I am still  haunted. . .

No.     .     .

Not by the meaningless, somewhat puzzling, a little scary dream. . .

but more.   .   .

by   the

D          R          E           A          M          S

the many. . .

the very,  very,  m a n y

d r e a m s

I have;

EYES     WIDE     OPEN

 intentionally. . .

on purpose. . .

with full knowledge. . .

awakened myself from

heart still pounding,

sweating,

a little out of breath

as I ran away from them

and never went back to

and seemingly lived

happily ever after.  .  .

THAT          HAUNTS          ME !

You. . . ?

YOU   EVER   HAVE   THOSE   AWAKENED   KIND   OF   DREAMS ?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.     .     .

I  don’t  want  to  wake  you .   .   .

(I  hope  no  one  else  does, either).

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