I’m back from the quick visit I made to America’s Dairyland. The trip from rural southern Oregon to rural northern Wisconsin is a long and rather arduous one (two drives and two or three flights each way) and I did it twice in three days. Whew!

Doing this trip coincident with moving from one city to another (and dealing with the anticipation of a new job) has stretched me physically and emotionally, but I seem to be hangin’ in there ok. Mostly.

Of course, I went back to spend just a little bit of time with dad, who, at 92+ years of age, is in declining health. His life these days seems to be characterized a lot by the terms “good day” and “bad day.” The Saturday afternoon I spent with him, along with my mom and siblings, seemed to be on the order of a good day. And, it was good for me to be able to spend even just one more afternoon with him.

This has me thinking that my life, and well, come to think of it, everybody’s life, can be divided up into the good-day/bad-day categories. Doesn’t it seem that way? It’s just that “reality” for each of us is so different, that what constitutes a disaster of a day for one person could be a walk-in-the-park for another.

I suppose that a lot of my bad days are self-created, and not externally-determined (as are dad’s, as his body slowly declines). Even when things are mostly falling into place for me, I know that I have the tendency to complain and whine and generally make myself miserable. I know that my attachment to having the universe be one way or another leads to the suffering I experience. Although I believe that “life is suffering,” I also believe that it would be healthier for me to be less invested in a model of a world that simply does not exist.