“That was good.”

This morning I'm prepping to record today's Do By Friday, and this week the challenge is mine: notice some good things.

It's a really simple idea. You just roll around conducting your life as you normally would, except you want to find yourself noticing things that are good. Just regular life stuff. And the smaller or more inconsequential the good thing is, the better.

Your bagel toasted perfectly. You correctly plugged in a thumb drive on the first try. A baby farted and it was funny.

The important part is you're noticing. Got it?

But, here comes Holden Caulfield

Only, there's already a problem here, isn't there? This feels like exactly the sort of self-involved Pollyana crap that hard cases like me and you reflexively scoff at. Pssh.

We are the learned and cynical types who wisely resist the emotional influence of strangers and opportunists. We know that everything is terrible and that only simple people accept random advice about finding light in the world. Because smart people always find the best reasons for being very sad.

But, here's the big point I'm going to surprise Alex with today: thing is, if you actually start doing this, a funny thing happens.

First, you do start noticing more things that are good. Because you've kind of made it a game, haven't you? And you people love winning games, and it starts to feel like this is a game you can win by volume. Which it actually kind of is. Whoa! So you start noticing harder. You start noticing more good things. Hey, look at that.

Then, in time, maybe the second part of the challenge kicks in. Because you may start saying to yourself, "That was good." At first, you'll just mutter it subvocally in your head, then you might start whispering "That was good," but eventually, you may find yourself saying out loud:

That was good.

Because it was good. And you noticed it. And then you said so. See?

Your new box of pencils smells like cedar. You chose your clothes in the dark, and yet you accidentally grabbed the perfect socks. You saw a crow carry half a Cinnabon into a eucalyptus tree. You found a free bonus onion ring in your order of curly fries. You met a French bulldog named "Arthur," who seemed to really like you.

Whatever day or month or decade you're having, I encourage you to try this exercise. Just for a day.

Features and benefits

Now, this is normally the part where I use clever prose to lucidly explain how and why this exercise works. It's the part where I try to persuade your very rational, very rigid, and very fast-thinking mind that this will produce x quantifiable results. Basically, this is normally the part where I beg the very sad part of your mind to consider that this is worth trying and probably will not kill you. That's usually what this part does.

But, I'm not going to do that today, because there's no point. This is not an exercise for the (theoretically) rational part of your mind. That part of your mind has designs on your never getting hurt again, so it's convinced you that stuff like this is dumb. Especially given The Current State of Affairs.

So, I'm not going to tediously explain how noticing good things can adjust your day-to-day outlook by keeping you moored to a deeper and more personal human connection with your actual life.

I'm also not going to say you may become less of a hopeless sourpuss by actively acknowledging the random beauty and madness of being an alive person.

And, in a million years, I'd never try to suggest that your fruitless attempts at invulnerability are making it difficult to ever get past the overwhelming events and emotions of currently being that very alive person.

I will not do that. But, I will just randomly paraphrase Arthur Janov to remind you that most fears are made of sadness. And both sadness and fear are making it very difficult for you to notice good things. Because you're letting the sadness and fear win by forfeit.

So, maybe just give it a try. I'll even help. Here's a two-minute video of Fred Willard playing a substitute organist at a funeral. Also, he's brought his own much larger organ.

That was good.

I wish I could help you over the hump. I wish I could persuade you that noticing good things helps you notice more good things, and that can uncannily make your life feel a little less bleak and hopeless.

Ultimately, I guess this is a challenge for the rote, rutted, short-breathed, exhausted, and overwhelmed part of your brain. That part of your brain is so tired, but it tries so very hard.

And, honestly, the less you feel like you need this, the more likely it may be to help. You might see that, even as you accept life as a full catastrophe, it also happens to be populated with an extraordinary number of good things just waiting to be noticed.

Being sad is not making you better. You deserve to notice something good today.

Works Cited

Janov, Arthur. The Primal Scream: The Cure for Neurosis. Dell, 1970.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. Delacorte, 1990.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown, 1951.

"Half Loop." Severance, created by Dan Erickson, directed by Ben Stiller, season 1, episode 2, Apple TV+, 18 Feb. 2022.

Handke, Peter. Lied vom Kindsein. Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981.

"It's the Cigars You Smoke That Are Going to Give You Cancer." I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, season 1, episode 3, Netflix, 23 Apr. 2019. Netflix, www.netflix.com.

"Martha My Dear." The White Album, performed by The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney, Apple Records, 1968.

Wenders, Wim, director. Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin). Performances by Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, and Peter Falk, Road Movies, 1987.