Deconstruction of a Good Day

Talking About the Good Ones

In our stories, we always want trouble. We want some conflict to push against. And we want retribution, or at least some simple resolve for all the troubles of the stories. We want it, maybe on some level, just because many of the problems, the troubles of our daily lives are so consequential and seemingly insurmountable. We want to see the stories get rid of the trouble, and give us the hope and satisfaction that our problems can and will eventually end.

In the stories surrounding us, in movies, novels, TikToks or wherever, we often collectively seem to push toward narratives about revenge. Trouble getting made right with more trouble. And that’s fine. Trouble makes for good stories. Troubles are problems waiting to be resolved, big and small. Trouble makes clicks. These stories with righteous endings feel so good to our core because they emanate some kind of justice that we rightly see as missing in the world. And this is all well and good. Without these tales of struggle and revenge, be they enlivening like the ending of White Lotus season 2 or a little more uncertain but just as validating as Parasite, it would feel as though we’re living out all of these challenging realities on our own, no recognition from the greater culture.

What’s more, these kinds of stories make us feel as though the world is listening, that because these stories exist at all that change is on the horizon. But, sadly, it doesn’t seem to be so. Inequality is missing and growing as usual these days. Frustrations are growing with the rich and politicians and AI won’t help those grievances, not to mention climate change. So, if this is all true, if we are so exhausted and fraught by these challenges as a society, how are we to tune out, recharge for another fight the next day?

Well, what of the stories about the good moments tucked between bad days and new troubles, those times when things around us just feel right and click? What about the good moments themselves? Those moments, I’d bet, are harder to find, especially in the din of capitalism today. Capital wants us anxious and sad as a means to fill a hole within us with clothes and toys and time on apps. So why not find the joy? Why not talk about those times, despite their seemingly benign unimportance? Why aren't there movies or stories that are just good, not without conflict, but just good? Those moments and days are more rare in life than we think, and probably deserve a bit more of our hype than we rightly give them. 

I had a day like this recently and I wanted to share it here. I wanted to share it because it really was a beautiful and serendipitously wonderful moment in time where old friends and new friends met and clicked as if we’d known each other for so long. But, really, I had a hard time understanding what anyone would get out of such a story. So, instead, here I am, deconstructing what it was that made the day so beautiful. I had to write about the bad of the world just to justify my telling you about this day, or at the very least that I had it. 

I met up with my friends Nick and Nat, and Jordan, who I was staying with, found us at a cafe in San Louis Obispo. From there, we wandered into a beaver festival in downtown, then headed to Montaña de Oro State Park to go tide pooling. After, we drove to Jordan’s friend’s restaurant, Mee Heng Low, for dinner, then topped it off with huge espresso martinis (aka flatliners) at Giuseppe's down the road. That’s all we did that day, and leaving felt so hard — to see Nick and Nat head out from San Louis for the Bay, ultimately to be leaving the country and their homes in the East Bay for good, it felt not just like one last wholesome hurrah, but a sweet and sad farewell that we couldn’t repeat. Nat was leaving the country on a long winded journey, Nick was moving back to his home state of New York, and I would be leaving in a day or two down to LA. Only Jordan lived there, meaning this could really only happen once. And so we made the best of it the way we could.

There really is nothing there, in that day, beside the bummer of them leaving the West Coast that could make us sad. It was a beautiful day, made in the middle of March, in the midst of a catastrophic world, a small reminder that despite what it seems the world and its stories tell us, good days can be found. Keep an eye out, cause I’m sure they’re closer than you think.