Character as the measure of a good day

I have my routines. Get the house in order early in the morning; eat healthy and try to make it three meals by the end of the day; do my most concentrated business work early in the day, and don't leave my desk till the job is (mostly) done. Think ahead to meeting notices and get the emails out before noon a week ahead. Get to the gym before dinner.

But there's one measure of effectiveness that's always in the background: take on the difficult conversation and get it out of your conscience' way so that everything else is just a check mark on your to do list. Tonight, after a long day of good hard work, I was ready to bolt for my nightly workout. My husband wanted to talk. I knew I had to listen and I had some things I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how to start it up. I was lucky. He started in and I listened and moved closer to some difficult, truthful points slowly, but nonetheless fully.

Without having planned it directly, or worried about how I would do it, I had the difficult conversation tonight that would open my evening up to a sense of peace and completion, one that I would not have had otherwise. And this is the way I now must live my life. If I achieve all my goals but still have a nagging conscience, a sense of words not spoken, issues left in limbo, half-truths holding together hidden secrets, and all of this keeping love and forgiveness in the dark, then I have nothing much to say about the value of my life. It's the courage to follow this path to personal freedom that marks the measure of our character. For one small conversation, this was a good day. All the rest is just routine.