How Was Your Day?

Don’t ever ask me, “How was your day?”

Every day is a chance for me to accomplish something great. In a day, I can run the fastest mile I’ve ever run. I can write the greatest fiction I’ve ever written. I can talk down a litigation client from a completely untenable position. I can show a friend around a surprisingly high number of cities in North America. There’s a lot I can do, and a lot of that only takes a few hours. More than likely, my day is still going.

This question is often asked as early as four or five in the afternoon. With any luck, it might be asked at seven or eight. Why ask it then, when there’s so much left of the day? Why not ask it at 11:59? One-third of anyone’s life happens between the hours of 4:00PM and midnight. One quarter of anyone’s life happens between 6:00PM and midnight. Why wish those hours away?

Using a standard Western life expectancy of 80, any given person lives 20 years of life between 6:00PM and midnight. So much can be done in an hour, or a minute, or a second. Why wish away two decades of someone’s life? Saying your day is over at some point in the late afternoon has a greater loss of average life expectancy than smoking.

Don’t ask me how my day was. It’s not over yet.