Another Day, Another Chance

We were on the 8:30 commuter train from Baltimore to see the sights of Washington, DC on a typical June morning in Maryland.  I honed in my attention momentarily to the burly train conductor, with greying beard, looking like he was less than five years from retirement, who was very chatty as he was checking for tickets, asking everyone how he or she was doing.  One responsive passenger asked back how he was doing, to which the conductor replied, “Well, another day, another chance.”

Not everyone may have paid attention to what he said; I did.  How and what did he mean by it?  I certainly could have asked him that and removed all the mystery and be done with my inquisitive thoughts.  But there was an hour and a half of travel time to go, so introspection and an opportunity to muse over it was the thing to do.

I was sure he had a personal attachment to the phrase with a funnel-effect-focus towards his own life but to me it tended to scatter my thoughts as to where it applied best.  It would have applied to anyone of every age, I thought.  From a growing infant to a 90 year old, from street vendors to high finance brokers but also from mole hills to mountains. For the baby, another day is another chance to grow stronger; for the 90 year old, getting out of bed for another day is a gift; a street vendor may have earned enough to feed his/her family, the financier could save a company or offer a portion of his money for under-privileged city kids during a fund raising.  

Another day is another chance for glaciers to move an inch or two; for rivers to flow; for the sun to rise once more. For the non-romantic it is another day for the sun and every star in the universe to fuse billions of tons of hydrogen into helium, releasing energy radiating to everywhere that can be reached.  One tiny blue planet turns one face for a day to absorb its daily dose of life-giving, life-sustaining sunlight.

Another day is for some of the iron to turn into rust but it is also another day for grapes to turn into wine; for bacteria to spoil food but also for yeast to make dough rise or for barley to make beer.  It is another day for schoolchildren to learn another new thing, for the sick to heal and for broken hearts to mend.  I can go on and on.  As I looked out the window of the speeding train that simple phrase continued to scatter my thoughts as old buildings and new structures blur by, like the daily pages on a desk calendar on fast forward.

As the train stopped at the various stations passengers got off as others came on board.  My wife and I were tourists so we knew what kind of day we wanted to have although we may not get to do or see everything we set out to do.  On excursions like this our expectations were not set too high, so disappointments will be low.  But, what about those folks coming and leaving at each stop?  Will some of them have a productive day, or at a minimum, a good day?  A well-dressed gentleman in a suit boarded with a diet soda in one hand and a briefcase in the other.  He had to find a seat quickly before the train started moving.  Was he a lawyer, or a mid-level staff at a lobbying firm?  An old lady was slow to get up from her seat to get to the exit door.  She did make it in time before the train closed its door.  I watched her moved slowly through the elevated platform.  I did not get to see her walked down the stairs as the train started to move. Her stop was miles away from Washington D.C. and she didn’t have a brief case, a laptop or smart phone so a high power job may not have been what she was commuting to.  No, my preferential thought was that she was just visiting a friend or better still she was going to see her grand kids. The gentleman and the old lady each had another day.  What was it going to be for them?

Actually, we need to ask that of each of us.  What kind of day does every person have as each sunrise draws open the curtain for another scene at the stage of our daily lives?  Should we account for it at each sunset?  More than that, we need to make each day count.  The train conductor was right - if there is another day, we all get another chance, to do just that – let’s make it count.