Most days are just fine…
Most days will start the usual way — wake up, brush your teeth, and so forth. Thereafter, based on the balance of coincidence and convergence of circumstances, the day will turn out either to your liking or just the opposite. Most of us have good and bad days or something near the ends of the two spectrums. But then most of the bell curve in the middle is full of just fine days. I suspect that even those who talk of adventures and excitement have a flatter bell curve than the rest of us. But even there, most days are just fine.
What is “fine”? Most people will have differing thresholds and different definitions of what qualifies. But more or less, the mediocre and stable is what qualifies as “fine”. Much like people or places, that are not too great or not too dull, a day that is just fine is a day that does not present any undue surprises, neither in the form of a moment of euphoria at having uncovered a piece of the mystery surrounding the meaning of life, nor with the disappointment that is likely to affect a mind with a broken appendage.
If you have faith that most of life is ruled by serendipity and there is no metaphysical or astrophysical predetermination of events and milestones, you would want most days be just fine. Contrary to popular cliches, adventure and forays into the unknown and high risk territory, yield very low probabilities of success. Most people do end up at the bleaker end of the spectrum of being disappointed by the failed attempt at success, or worse, a bruised and broken body part. Of a 100 inspirational stories of sensational, or even moderate success, there are many thousands of people who forayed to take risks and reverted to the monotone of just fine.
If, on the other hand, you are a man of faith and believe in a grand plan of some definition, and put your money on the fact that that which is to happen has already happened then there is more reason to wish for the stars to align to a just fine orientation. When you take a look around, you see that the grand plan is just as much based on the equivalent of a chance of winning a lottery as any rationally predictable set of parameters that can be predicted or fabricated for a different outcome. Stones and chants included, most of payers at your preferred choice of a house of worship would be in the hope of stability and just fine, outcomes.
So, after having concluded that in either circumstance, the outcome is a gamble away from superlative success or outright disappointment. I think that the greatest pleasure and the highest chances of avoidance of pain, bodily or intellectual, lies in the cessation of active pursuits in either direction, forward, upward, or, for thrill seekers and historians, downward to backward.
Acceptance of the status quo as the best possible outcome, and the general fact that life is just a concurrence of serendipitous events is the hardest first step to enlightenment in any form. Our need for more in terms of scope of life is a perpetual foundation of human misery. We must cease the pursuit of measurably elevated outcomes to seek a fundamental truth of all life, as it unfolds, is inevitable in form and time.
