In “Instructions for a Happy Day” by Catherine Sleeman, I found a refreshing view of how our days should be. The memoir begins simply – waking up to “the color of sycamore and silver birch creeping round the curtains.” As the day progresses the descriptions delve deeper into the attitude of the reader: “[you] will not pre-guess your doom or your future or try to stave it away with self-deprecation.” As the day ends, the instructions conclude with not thinking about the past and instead being ready for the future.

I really relate to the section on stopping self-deprecation. Calling yourself a failure is glorified and often seems to be a mandatory activity. When friends treated statements of self-failure as necessary parts of a conversation, I shared my own ugly thoughts. Sometimes, I don’t want to say those things but do it to fit in. Now I realize that there is no reason why I or anybody else should loop our hateful statements around. We can move forward. We can and will know, as Catherine wrote, that “this is your present tense – your future past.”