These Are The Indistinct Old Days...

It is very possible that right now, at this very moment, somebody, somewhere is having the greatest time of their life. They are laughing, smiling, maybe even singing, in the company of friends or family or perhaps even alone. 

The magic of this moment for them is beyond measure, potentially even beyond comprehension. They will never again come close to how they feel at this exact moment in time, not even for a fleeting second. 

Maybe it's at the birth of their first child, or hell, maybe it's at the conception of their first child...just sayin'...or maybe they're signing a recording contract after spending years playing the bar-band circuit, or maybe they've become debt free for the first time in decades and they're dancing naked in the living room (I did, when that happened), or maybe they have just had dinner with a friend and everything went absolutely perfectly right.

It could be a million things, it could be anything. But whatever it was, once it passed, it became the bar, the measuring stick, against which all other great times will be measured.

We all have that comparison model tucked away somewhere in the back of our minds. We don't realize we do - until we pull it out. 

Usually after (or maybe during) some great event in our lives - say you're cleaning up after a party and just suddenly it pops into your head: "Wow, this is the best party since Halloween of '04...man that was the party to end all parties..."

Of course the opposite is also true. We all have memories of the bleakest of times that we compare all other bad times to: "Man, this is the worst night I've had since my Honeymoon...not as bad as that, nothing could be as bad as that, but it's close, definitely top five."

The odd thing is, most of us, if not outright all of us, do not have any idea we are experiencing the greatest time of our life when it is happening. We just know we are having a great time. 

However, when we are having the worst time, the absolute worst time of our lives, we are keenly aware of it. It's as if there is some mechanism in the mind/body that is activated for the sole purpose of remembering the absolute worst time of our lives. 

And it usually reminds us of that worst time at inopportune moments, such as when we have finally gotten over the grief/embarrassment/guilt of the memory...that's when the electro-chemical synapse makes the leap at the cellular level. We'll be watching a comedy and the main characters will become engaged in a situation that is similar to the situation that led up to the worst moment of your life (except with better clothes/hair/teeth, and much wittier dialogue) and BOOM! You're crying. 

Which scares your date, and now this becomes the new absolutely worst time of your life.