People casually say ‘I had a bad day.’ This practice is very common and most of the times we end up labeling even a normal day as a ‘bad day’. However, the definition of a ‘bad day’ differs from person to person.

I have tried to list a few so-called bad days here:

• A student claims to have had a bad day after going through tough exams or after getting bad results;
• A beggar after being unable to gather enough for the day;

• A housewife after having to deal with kids throughout theday and not finding her husband come home at 5 PM;
• A programmer after being stuck in a programming puzzle;
• A boyfriend after being dumped by his girlfriend and vice versa;
• A sales person after having failed to reach a sales target;
• A doctor after being unable to see enough patients to make his/her targeted money for the day;
• A lawyer after being unable to win a case;
• A security guard after failing to recognize the business owner that he/she is working for and refusing to let him/her in;
• A thief after stealing fake jewelries;
• A farmer after failing to finish the targeted work for the day;
• A primary school child having lost his/her favorite pencil; and
• A typical corporate manager after having to go through hundreds of emails and not being able to respond to all of them.

Trying to list the kinds of bad days people have is tiring and almost impossible to list them all.

The world is getting crowded and becoming more competitive. At the same time, people are craving for more and more. The failure to achieve even a tiny bit of what they want makes them feel like they have had a bad day but, in fact, very few of us have gone through a ‘real’ bad day or the ‘ultimate’ bad day. Only those who have gone through those days ever learn to appreciate every morning, every afternoon and every evening they have. The usual minor dissatisfactions do not make their entire day bad. I call these people ‘thick skinned’.

My idea of a ‘real’ bad day is as follows:

• I call it a bad day for a five year old child when he/she loses his/her parents and has nothing left but the cruel street. (No one to go to and no place to live in and no one to say “Please do not cry; I am here for you!”)
• I call it a bad day for an old person when he/she is forced to watch his/her young family members being killed. (This has happened in villages of Nepal and Cambodia during communist uprisings.)
• A CEO can claim to have had a bad day when he/she unknowingly/unintentionally does something and ends up going to a jail for life, having to leave behind all that he/she has earned and created.
• I call it a bad day for a young student when he/she has to work 12 hours a day to earn a slice of bread instead of attending school. (Many children in Nepal and India stay in somebody else’s house as round-the-clock servants. They have to wash dishes, clean toilets, do the laundry amongst numerous other tasks. For these children, every day is a bad day.)
• A mom in Ethiopia and Sudan can claim to have had a bad day when she sees her child dieing of hunger. (Wives should be thinking of those moms and should not be grumbling when their husbands show up an hour late from work.)
• I label it as a bad day for a girl when she is used against her will and molested.
• I call it a bad day for a young man when he does not get any opportunity to earn bread and butter for his family. (Not being able to support one’s family is indeed unfortunate.)
• I see it as a bad day for a housewife when her husband returns dead from office and she does not have any means to support her kids.
• I call it a bad day for a husband when he finds out that his loving wife has a second stage cancer.
• I call it the worst day for anyone when he/she learns that he/she is going through a disease (say, a third stage malignant cancer) that can never be cured.

I hope, after reading this article, people do not want to brag about having a bad day. We all should learn to appreciate what we presently have. We should indeed expect better but that does not mean that we be unhappy all the time and label every day as a bad day. If we develop the habit of considering even an average day as a bad day, we will soon exhaust the capability of tolerance when a real bad day pounces upon us.

Let’s enjoy what we have and hope that the real bad days never come in our lives. But, we never know because things are not under our control. Whether we believe in god or not, there is something out there which is controlling all these events coming to our lives. We can control our deeds but not our destiny. Let’s cherish the moments we have and strive to make this world more beautiful and purposeful.

Let’s put together our courage to face for the ultimate bad day that each of us must go through. Hopefully, each of us has only one ultimate bad day. I have seen people who had to go through a series of really bad days. Still, they managed to struggle and wait for the next morning. They had the courage to live on and not to kill themselves. They fought back and continued living; hoping for good days.

Most of us spend time talking about others, criticizing their actions and envying their achievements. Many of us become better after having to go through one of the real bad days that I mentioned above. Those who have never gone through the real bad days have difficulty understanding the value of respecting others and caring for them.

Nothing is more fulfilling than being able to make others smile. For this, we need to show respect for others and care for them. If we practice doing this, real bad days will never come to our lives because we will have friends standing as a wall between all the ‘bad’ days and us; I hope.