July is the month we say goodbye to writers who are retiring or moving on to new adventures, and this is Michal’s last post. She has been writing with us since August 2022.
“Describe the perfect day” is one of those conversation starters that you find in the oddest places. On the back of a party napkin. At a work seminar. The answer unfolds in my mind in the sweetest of feelings and colors and music. In my experience, the spoken answer always falls flat. When I was a kid, the answer involved taking multiple trains and planes to get to a few of my favorite spots on the planet (some that I hadn’t yet visited). I now know that any day involving multiple vehicle transfers could never possibly be a perfect day.
As I got older, my answer started to diversify in terms of activities: water play, reading, watching movies, hiking, star-gazing. When I considered what food needed to be consumed on the perfect day, the answer got even more complicated. Now when I think about stuffing all those favorites into one day, I can just picture myself withdrawing from overstimulation. Even curating the right group of people is hard. I love my family and friends, so I would want them all to be part of the day, and then I would be totally preoccupied worrying about the group’s mood and cohesion.
I just spent a few minutes looking at peoples’ answers to this question on sites like Quora and Blurtit, and I can’t help but wonder if the people who answered really enjoy starting their day by drinking warm water mixed with apple cider vinegar. A few people didn’t talk about the concrete aspects of the day at all and focused more on spiritual fulfillment and telling the truth. Some were just hoping to get through the day without breaking anything. I was kind of impressed with how many people started with the assumption that a perfect day could be an average day. They beat me to the punchline.
The real question underneath the perfect day question is “do you know how you, specifically, achieve bliss, and do you think you can recreate that in one day?” In my experience, “stumbling upon” is more likely than “achieving” when it comes to bliss, which is what makes the perfect day question so hard to answer. For me, bliss also usually involves overcoming a preceding struggle or stressor, and who would want to wish that on their perfect day? (Side note: I remember being worried about this dynamic in second grade when we were asked to write about heaven. I had a mini crisis that we would have no good stories to tell in heaven because of the absence of difficulty and conflict. Now I’m less worried because we have enough difficulty and conflict on this side of the eschaton to provide the balance.)
In any case, I can’t end this post without at least trying to write down elements of a perfect day. Bliss is the goal. Simplicity for the sake of pacing is the caveat. Here goes:
- Eight hugs from people I love, at least two of which happened just because we felt like it and not because of a greeting or farewell.
- Excellent food that somehow involves work—either I grew it, spent a few hours preparing it, or simply climbed a dune with a picnic basket and was really hungry when I reached the top.
- Meteorology that has made up its mind. An achingly blue sky, a cathartic rainstorm, a steady snowfall.
- Watching the work of my hands or my mind achieve something useful and beautiful.
- The chance to be submerged in a body of shimmering blue water that still looks clear at ten feet deep.
- A jam session on a porch at dusk that morphs into fits of laughter over things that won’t seem funny tomorrow.
- A poem, read aloud, that lands perfectly in the air and stays with me all week.
- Falling asleep to tiredness and gratitude.
Michal graduated from Calvin in 2022 with a major in writing and a minor in global development studies. She’ll be working with a refugee resettlement organization in Hungary for the 2022-2023 year. She is always up for a spontaneous trip to the closest beach.
