Having A Good Day

I was walking in the park one day, on the very merry month of May. It was one of those days that feels generous from the start, as if the world has decided—without explanation—to be kind. The air was lightly perfumed with lilac and laughter, drifting in gentle waves, and the trees wore their freshest green like debutantes at a spring ball. Everything seemed newly awakened, freshly washed by rain and possibility.

Children darted between swings and squirrels, their joy uncontained and effortless. They laughed with their whole bodies, arms flung wide, voices rising and falling like birdsong. Nearby, an old man sat on a low stone wall, playing a tune on a weathered harmonica. The notes were imperfect, a little cracked, but full of feeling. It sounded as though the melody had lived a long life, as if it had traveled through decades before arriving here, calling memories up from the soil itself.

I walked slowly, letting the path decide where I would go. The park’s winding trails seemed less like routes and more like invitations. I noticed how my breath naturally softened, how my shoulders dropped without effort. There are days when the body remembers how to relax before the mind catches up.

As I wandered deeper into the park, I came upon a bench beneath a willow tree. Its long branches swayed gently, brushing the air like the arms of a dreaming dancer. The light filtered through the leaves in a way that made everything feel slightly unreal, as though I had stepped into a painting rather than a public park.

On the bench sat a woman dressed in white linen. The fabric moved easily with the breeze, unstructured and simple, as if it belonged exactly where it was. She was sketching—her hand moving with deliberate grace, not hurried, not hesitant. It was the kind of movement that comes from being fully present.

When she looked up, our eyes met.

There was nothing startling about her gaze, yet it held me. Calm. Knowing. Familiar, in a way I couldn’t explain. It felt, quite simply, as though she had been waiting for me to arrive. I hesitated, unsure whether to intrude on her quiet moment, but she smiled gently and gestured to the empty space beside her.

So I sat.

At first, we spoke very little. Words felt unnecessary, almost disruptive. We watched the willow sway. We listened to the distant harmonica and the laughter drifting across the grass. Eventually, conversation arose naturally, like a stream finding its course.

We spoke of nothing and everything.

We talked about the way clouds sometimes resemble forgotten continents, how certain shapes seem to carry stories we almost remember. We spoke of the scent of rain just before it falls—the way the air changes its mind, becoming heavier, more expectant. We talked about how some days feel like poems waiting to be written, while others are more like unfinished sentences.

She told me her name was May.

Not the month, she said with a small smile, but the meaning.

Possibility.

She spoke about how easily people overlook good days, how quickly they rush past them on their way to something else. “A good day,” she said, “doesn’t announce itself. It simply offers itself, quietly. You have to be paying attention.”

That stayed with me.

We talked about time—not as something to manage, but as something to experience. About how moments expand when we stop trying to capture them. About how presence is not an effort, but a permission.

At some point, I realized that the park felt different. Not changed exactly—but revealed. As if I had been given a glimpse behind the curtain of the ordinary. The afternoon had softened into something richer, layered with meaning I didn’t need to define.

When the sun began its slow descent behind the hills, casting long shadows across the grass, May closed her sketchbook. I didn’t ask what she had been drawing. Some things are better left unseen, allowed to live in the imagination.

She stood, nodded once, and walked away down the path, her white linen gradually dissolving into the green and gold of the evening.

I remained on the bench for a while longer, listening, breathing, noticing.

And as I finally rose to leave, I realized something simple and profound.

I had been having a good day all along.