ABSOLUTE SUCCESS

One day recently, toward evening, I said to a dear friend that I thought it had been a “successful” day, but almost as soon as I said it, the thought came to me that every day is successful. When I was thinking the day had been a success, I was thinking from the smallest possible perspective, that of an  infinitesimal, isolated person called “me”, who presumably can judge whether a day has been what it should have been. It’s as if I was a sitting in a judge’s chair in some vast courtroom, solemnly passing down my decision to the waiting universe: This day has been successful. It became more ridiculous the more I thought about it. Who am I, this small speck of a soul in an endless cosmos, to pass judgment on the praiseworthiness of a day? Can I know whether the sunshine spread itself around in the appropriate manner? Am I to decide whether the thousands of cars in Connecticut crossed from one place to another in the most perfect way possible ? Is it up to little me to judge the rightness or wrongness of an entire winter day? The more I thought about it, the more clearly I remembered a simple truth: from the largest perspective, that of the measureless universe itself, every day, every hour, every instant, is precisely what it has to be and should be. Absolute success is built into each passing second of time. Stars shine as they should, as magnificently as possible, and shoes scrape along a sidewalk with a similar impressiveness, just as they must at any given second in this marvelously successful universe.