5 out of 5

When I'm evaluating my overall state of being and happiness, I usually find it easiest to go with a 5-point scale...

A 3 out of 5 is the default score.  Notably, 3/5 is above 50%, so it feels like it's "generally, slightly positive".  Things aren't great, but they aren't bad either.  They're just "good" in a normal way.  Doing the things that I normally do.  Getting some amount of forward progress done -- not necessarily on many things, but one or two things, at least.

A 4 out of 5 is not entirely uncommon, but still something to be celebrated.  It either means I'm having a really good period of my life, or just that the day itself went well.  Maybe I was able to do a good mix of the things that make me feel accomplished and good (writing letters, working on my game, doing art, cooking).  Maybe I just really enjoyed some nice white tea.  Maybe I went to a social dance event and it went well.  Or maybe I hung out with a friend and it was nice.

A 2 out of 5 usually means something is wrong.  It could be something discrete, like being stressed about something coming up, or feeling sick, or not having enough time.  But often the "2 out of 5" days are the days where I'm just feeling that slight dissatisfaction with life.  A lot of the time it manifests as long-term mild loneliness or depression -- depression of the type that makes normally-fun activities and daily life seem not as exciting or pleasant.  But sometimes it could just be that I kind of let the day while away and didn't get to any of the things that really give me sustenance.

The 1 out of 5 days are, thankfully, rare, at least nowadays.  It usually means something particularly bad happened, usually of an emotional sort in nature, but every once in a while it could be something physical too, like covid or having an allergic reaction or whatever.  Strings of 1 out of 5 days are almost unheard of, but they have happened.  Usually those are the big disasters in life -- the things that end up forming into trauma afterwards.  I can think of a few times when that happened, and they were really bad.

Every once in a while you get a 5 out of 5 day, too.  These are probably as rare as the 1 out of 5 days.  Sadly, sometimes they don't get remembered as much in a specific sense, but that's because in order to be this happy it's not necessarily the case that something specific has to be happening.  It's not like the 5 out of 5 days only happen on special occasions, rather, it's a matter of things really lining up in life to make it happen.  It's really easy to call a day a 4 out of 5, it's much more rare to really go all the way and say it was a 5 out of 5.  Often the fact that my day =can= be a 5 out of 5 is already something to celebrate, because so often life has some negative factor or other that seems to simply precludes it in the first place on most days.  The nature of happiness means that consecutive 5 out of 5s don't really tend to happen very often, but it has been possible, too.

Today...was one of those rare days.  Again, it's not even so much the day itself that deserves celebration, but rather the fact that life is in a place where it's even possible to reach this level of overall happiness and satisfaction.