Today I Choose to be Cheerful – The Comedy of Daily Choosing

The cashier at Trader Joe’s just asked how my day is going. “Great!” I chirp. We both know I’m lying. My cart contains wine, chocolate, and frozen dinners. This is not the shopping cart of someone having a great day.

But sometimes choosing cheerful isn’t about feeling it. It’s about not spreading your funk to innocent bystanders. It’s about protecting your energy by not rehearsing problems to strangers.

The Cheerful Conspiracy

My mother taught me that cheerfulness was currency. Use it right, and people want to help you. Use it wrong, and you’re that annoying person everyone avoids.

At 61, I understand she was being strategic. Cheerfulness opens doors, makes hard things easier. The trick is knowing when to deploy authentic cheerful versus strategic cheerful.

The Morning Experiment

Last Tuesday, I decided to be genuinely cheerful for one morning. I looked for actual reasons:

– Coffee tasted perfect (cheerful!)
– Found $5 in jacket pocket (extremely cheerful!)
– Husband made me laugh with terrible joke (reluctantly cheerful!)
– Sun came out after three days of rain (naturally cheerful!)

By noon, I was exhausted but oddly lighter. My face hurt from genuine smiling. Who knew cheerful was physical exercise?

Cheerful as Rebellion

You know what’s radical at 61? Being cheerful without reason. Not because something good happened. But because you choose to bring that energy to a world trying to kill it.

Yesterday, the news was awful, my knee hurt, and I’d gotten three robocalls before 9 AM. I could have surrendered to grumpiness. Instead, I turned up music and danced in my kitchen. Badly. Cheerfully.

My husband walked in, saw me dancing while scrambling eggs. “What’s wrong with you?” “I’m choosing cheerful,” I said. “It’s an act of resistance.”

The Cheerful Boundaries

I’m not cheerful about everything. I refuse to be cheerful about injustice, loss, pain, or exploitation. Cheerful isn’t about denying reality. It’s about choosing your response to manageable irritations.

Finding Your Authentic Cheerful

My cheerful doesn’t look like a greeting card. It looks like laughing at my own jokes, singing off-key in the car, complimenting strangers, finding absurdity hilarious, celebrating tiny victories like successful parallel parking.

It’s not bouncy. I’m 61, not a champagne bottle. It’s more like steady warmth, a background hum of “this is okay, we’re okay.”

The Contagion Factor

Cheerful is contagious, but so is grumpy. When I choose cheerful, it spreads. The barista smiles back. The neighbor stops to chat. Everyone’s emotional temperature shifts slightly.

Today’s Practice

Tonight, dinner with my sister who complains professionally. My strategy: aggressive cheerfulness. Not to deny her feelings, but to balance them. For every complaint, I’ll find something genuinely good.

Will she find it annoying? Probably. Will it preserve my sanity? Definitely.

Today I choose cheerful. Not because life is perfect. Because there’s still coffee and dogs and unexpected $5 bills. There’s still music and bad jokes and sun after rain.

That’s enough reason. More than enough. That’s everything.