“Monday 5 Things” ….. 5 Days …..
October 20, 2025 by D. Paul Graham
Ever curious and always amused by the quirks of life, join D. Paul Graham each Monday for more M5T pondering.
“Take a long deep breath to start the day”, Photo by D. Paul Graham. Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA circa 2024
We so easily toss the phrase around, “What a day.” Sometimes it’s from triumph. Most times from exhaustion. Sometimes it’s just filler between coffee and collapse. Lately, I’m trying to understand how 9 ½ months have flown by this year. I’ve noticed how easily the days stack up, one indistinguishable from the next. Meetings blur. Messages multiply. Momentum masquerades as meaning. We’re so busy doing that we forget the quiet art and act of being.
Our calendars are full, yet our spirits feel under booked. Maybe “what a day” shouldn’t just mark the ones that overwhelm us, but the ones that restore us too.
Life isn’t meant to be one long sprint or spreadsheet of checkboxes. It needs texture from the days that slow us down, open us up, and remind us of who we are when no one’s asking for anything. This morning’s M5T considers five kinds of days that keep life rich, rhythmic, and real.
1. A DAY FOR “NOTHING”. One of the hardest things for me to do is to plan to do nothing. Yet at some point, doing nothing may be one of the most important things we can do for ourselves. Doing nothing can be an act of renewal. I often confuse “rest” with “recovery from exhaustion,” but they’re not the same. Rest is intentional. Exhaustion is the bill you pay for ignoring it too long. Rest is deliberate, not desperate. A true day of nothing defies a world that has become obsessed with output. It’s the empty page a writer stares at without guilt. The silence between songs that lets the music breathe. It’s the space in which your mind exhales. It’s a day where you allow yourself to let your thoughts wander, not toward a to-do list, but toward the forgotten and ignored corners of yourself. A day for nothing allows you to sit long enough to hear your own pulse again. It’s a day to realize that the world keeps turning even when you don’t. It’s a day that will carry on if you don’t check for likes and comments. Doing nothing purposefully is how we calibrate creativity and calm. Stillness isn’t a pause in progress. It’s the quiet private place where new ideas take root. A day of “nothing” may be the very thing that restores the most significant things in your life. The discipline to do nothing may be the quietest, most essential thing you can do for yourself.
2. A DAY TO GO TOO FAR. Safety is comfortable, but it’s rarely memorable. There’s a quiet liberation in the days when you step past routine and let curiosity take the wheel. Make space for one of those days. A day to say yes to the unfamiliar and no to the demands of other. Take the detour that adds an hour to the journey but gives you a story worth retelling. Say something out loud when everyone else is still deciding whether it’s appropriate. These are the days when your pulse quickens not from fear, but from feeling alive. Days that remind you that your individuality is meant to be lived, not managed. The sweet spot between fear and freedom is often where the magic of life happens. Playing it too safe leaves a scar from the internal voice of regret that asks, “what if?” Take the leap. Overshoot the mark. Open that expensive bottle of wine. Use the best china plates and crystal glasses for dinner tonight. Tell someone how you really feel. Embrace your fears, because every time you do, you fine tune your soul on the other side of courage.
3. A DAY TO CHANGE WHO YOU ARE. Sometimes you wake up and realize the version of yourself you’ve been carrying, the persona you’ve been presenting to others, no longer fits who you really are or who you want to be. Your colors have dulled. Your shape has shifted. What once sparked your energy now drains you and feels like background noise. Those realizations are not a crisis. They are an inner invitation for you to think and to grow. Transforming our nature can come from a new rhythm, a clearer compass, and a sharper sense of purpose. This can be a day to stop shrinking yourself to fit spaces you’ve outgrown. It can be a day to forgive yourself for the seasons that you’ve stayed stationary and silent. The most sustainable change doesn’t usually arrive with fireworks, or vast epiphanies. Often, change begins in the quiet of your personal thoughts with a conscious decision to make a change. A solitary choice, a fresh mindset, a subtle boundary, a gentle course correction that redirects your path. When life hands you the tools to reshape yourself, take them. Make that pivot that realigns your life trajectory. Step into the next version of yourself with curiosity and grace.
4. A DAY TO FEEL. King Solomon wrote that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that emotion isn’t chaos. It’s choreography. The full measure of being alive requires the high notes and the hollow ones, the peaks and the valleys, the sunlight and the shadows, and successes and failures. All give shape to our days and provide a framework for our quest of insight and wisdom. We spend so much energy keeping our emotions “in check,” as if feeling deeply is some kind of indulgence. Emotion is the language of participation. It’s how we register that we’re here, still breathing, still learning, still growing. Some days, laughter will heal you faster than logic ever could. The kind of laughter that feels like it’s unstoppable, stealing your breath, folding you in half, replacing the heaviness inside you, and restoring your spirit. Other days, tears do the cleansing. Tears aren’t weakness. They’re a reminder that compassion still lives inside you. They’re the echo of empathy, the quiet evidence that something within you still believes in feeling. The sacred proof that your heart still bends toward love and still answers the call to feel. To be human is to live within that full spectrum of the joy, the ache, the wonder, the grief. Give yourself permission to feel without filing emotions into convenient categories of “good” or “bad.” Laugh hard. Cry hard. Both are necessary for the soul. Because while numbness may protect you from pain, it also robs you of the exquisite thrill of being alive.
5. A DAY TO BEGIN AGAIN. There’s a quiet and beautiful magic in starting over. Not the grand, overzealous champagne-and-resolution kind, but the moderate personal sort. The morning-after kind. The “I know I am better than this” kind. The moment when hope hums softly beneath the noise and whispers, “It’s ok. Try it again.” We all need those days that remind us that we’re still the authors of our unfolding story. It’s a magnificent realization and mindset that you can restart anything. A dream you set down when life got loud. A friendship that drifted to silence. A version of yourself that’s been waiting patiently for you to come back. Beginning again isn’t about erasing what was, or what you’ve done. It’s honoring how far you’ve come and answering your desire for growth in a new and healthier direction for your life. The world will tell you that reinvention requires crisis, heartbreak, or reinforcements. That’s simply a fallacy. Starting over requires courage of yourself. The kind that shows up quietly, coffee in hand, ready to try once more. The mindset that accepts failure and is ready to start again by writing a new sentence, then a new paragraph, and then a new chapter in the book of who you really are. You don’t need permission. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need today. Monday.
Here's to a week of alignment, of protecting your heart, mind, and spirit, and to continuing to move forward.
© 2025 D. Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved
Paul continues on his quest to have a good day of nothing.
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