If you were asked to name the best day of your life or the most important day in your life, or the happiest day, chances are they would not be the same day. Wedding day, the birth of your child, moving into your first home are monumental days to remember, for sure, but if we were privileged to look back on all the days of our lives, to find the happiest time spent, it could most likely be a day that seemed to be completely ordinary. At the time.
Emily, a character in Thornton Wilder's "our Town" who has died young in childbirth, has her request answered, and is allowed to relive one day in her life. She does not wish to be overwhelmed by a significant event, so she chooses the day of her 12th birthday. Needless to say, witnessing the beauty and enormity of the common and ordinary events of her past life affects her so deeply that she asks to be taken back to the cemetery.
If we the living are to learn any lesson from a viewpoint into our past, and passing, lives, we could be aware that it is the ordinary interactions with others that mean the most and gave us the most pleasure. What was the best day of your life? The day you got a raise at your job? The day the mortgage was paid off? The day you received a community service ward? The day you collected on a bet? Or was it a time you found a folded up note from your young child telling you how much he loved you, or the time you shared a secret with your sister, or a summer day when you sat in the sun and time seemed to stand still. You can look at old snapshots and see yourself young and healthy and smiling: could one of those days have been the best day of your life? And you were completely unaware at the time.
In memory of one who recently died, a relative recalled a youthful memory of him, "smiling, with the summer sun on his face." Maybe that was the best day of his life, and no one was aware. As Emily said, overcome by her discovery from beyond, "The living don't understand."
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