This business of going to bed every night at precisely ten o’clock is in many ways a welcome adoption but at moments like this – when I’ve devoted an entire day to “taking care of business” I need a break from routine. Not that it is something I am attempting to avoid; it’s just that sometimes I require more than habit to make me sleep or at least stay asleep without pondering things over and over again. Anyway what’s keeping me up and going at this dreadful hour – it is shockingly now past midnight – is that I have been fussing all day rearranging things. Just little things, really, but nonetheless things that obviously captured my attention.
It is remarkable how affective the undertakings are considering the disturbances amount to what are by all accounts trifling matters. But it just shows how little it takes to disrupt one’s moods, feelings and attitudes.
“Affective states are psycho-physiological constructs—meaning, largely, concepts that connect mental and physical processes. According to most current views, they vary along three principal dimensions: valence, arousal, and motivational intensity.“
It also shows just how relevant and insistent are one’s other routines; things that is other than sleeping at a regular hour. Nonetheless in spite of what I have made paramount points of obsession today, several more stimulating features have arisen from the unraveling of the knots:
1. Nothing is perfect. We all know this to be true yet we madly persist to expect flawlessness though even to our ultimate discredit. The more adroit commitment is to make do with what we have.
The idiom meaning to manage to get along with the means available is make do, not make due. Make do is short for make [something] do well enough, where do carries the rare sense to serve a specified purpose. So this do is similar to the one used in sentences such as, “I could use a cup of coffee, but tea will do.”
2. Very little matters. This is not to suggest that something isn’t for the moment at least very compelling; but it requires only brief examination to reach a decision that in the overall view of things, it’s not all wrong..
3. There’s always tomorrow. Ironically in my instance, a good night’s rest is usually all it takes to adjust the mechanism. My late mother was fond of saying, “It’ll get done”. And she was always right. Things do manage to straighten themselves out one way or another eventually.
4. How lucky we are. This is far more than a trite comment. The fact is many of us have very little cause for complaint. Me included. Once the commotion of the day has settled, when once again we’re surrounded by the roof over our head and the collection of our favourite possessions, we have to admit it isn’t all that bad after all.
5. So then what? This is the unassailable reminder that in the end we’ll have nothing to do so we’re best to do what we can while we have the chance.
By blending these elements together it isn’t long before one accepts the currency of affairs and resolves to put one’s head on a pillow.