Four years ago, I had this daily ritual where I would message a number of friends the thing that made my day everyday.
At the end of each message was the hashtag #ThingsThatMakeMyDay. Pretty corny and slighty narcissistic, I know. It was like those GMs we’d send to each other back in grade school (or send only to that one person you really liked talking to. If you know, you know).
I started with two friends, but the list grew to about 30 or so towards the end of it. It lasted about a few months.
I would message them about conversations I had with Uber drivers on the way to an internship, the falafel I discovered at the Legazpi Sunday market, a solid film that had just come out.
Not every day is great. I’m sure we can all agree on that.
In fact, most days are pretty mediocre and some are just plain bad.
But, I’ve learned, every day has a peak moment.
In his book, The Power of Moments, Stanford professor Chip Heath talks about creating these peak moments: “In life, we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in.”
The same is true when we look back at our days. We’re so busy trying to forget about the annoying and the bad, that we overlook the peaks. Every day has one, and the goal is to notice it as it comes, are at least in hindsight.
Looking back, the best part about this exercise of capturing these peaks everyday wasn’t the moment itself, although that part was great in it its own ways. What was really remarkable for me was the reliving of a moment and sharing it with people you care about.
On the best days, some of my friends would even reply with their own version of #ThingsThatMakeMyDay.
And it was in those moments that you feel, this whole experience of living and going through the day-to-day is a shared one.
For the most part, we’re going at it alone. That’s true in many ways, especially now that we’re forcibly separated from one another. Not to mention, most of life’s most difficult moments and choices, we have to go through and face on our own.
But if we look long and hard enough, we notice that despite the stark differences in our days, we’re all headed the same direction.