On several occasions, Pat told me that one thing she loved about her father was the first thing he would say in the morning. “Great Day! Wonderful Day! Great Day! That could not have been easy for him because he was saying this in the depths of the Great Depression. As a dentist, sometimes he had to take goods in trade for his services. Pat’s mother was a Chicago Publish School teacher, and like others, received promissory notes and scrip instead of a paycheck. He continued saying it even when he was suffering from MS and needed assistance getting out of his wheelchair.
Or perhaps, those of you in and around Allegan remember the area’s beloved mail carrier, Marv Voss. Ask him how he was doing and he had just one answer. “GREEEEAAAAAT!” as if he was Tony the Tiger. A mutual friend continues the tradition as a way of honoring Marv.
For some reason, their enthusiasm came to mind, along with a flashback to the morning after the 2016, election. That day, I walked down to the post office to collect my mail and said a quiet ‘good morning’ to someone I passed on the sidewalk. She turned on me with a fury and shouted that it was not a good morning and it would never again be a good day for the next four years, and maybe longer. Obviously, she was not happy about the outcome of the election.
What led to this short jog down memory lane was when I heard a spiritual being played on the radio. The title was, “Great Day! Great Day! The righteous marchin’” The song originated in the South during the era of legalized slavery. It was a song of defiance then and remained a song of defiance during the worst of the Jim Crow Years. When the Ku Klux Klan came into being during Reconstruction, and then again a century ago, the song was a symbolic way of shaking one’s fist at the oppressor. Tragically, the song is making a comeback – not out of nostalgia, but necessity.
Unless someone explained the words to the oppressors, they were probably clueless, believing it was yet another spiritual about going to heaven after death. That was completely wrong. The song was about that great day in the present tense: right here, right now, even when it appears everything was wrong. It was no futuristic pie-in-the sky theology, but about current events. The singers were determined to grasp the day and make it a great one.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with “Great Day! Great Day!” but those of us of a certain age remember the 1946 Disney movie, Song of the South, where James Baskett sang “Zippity Doo Dah.” The words “what a wonderful day,” are repeated several times. However, take a look a Mr. Baskett. His hat is in tatters, as are his clothes, so we know he has had a very rough life. Even so, he smiles and he sings, and animals (all cartoon) come up to him like they did to St. Francis of Assisi. The movie has been pulled from circulation because it did not fit someone’s agenda and they decided the song had racial connotations. That is unfortunate, because it too is a song of defiance.
We have a long history of songs of defiance. During the dark days of World War Two, Spike Jones and his City Slickers led the Allies with the song, “In D’ Fuehrer’s Face” – complete with a few Bronx Raspberries stirred in for good measure. It was one of many, and along with them, countless cartoons that made fun of Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini.
More recently, a group of older southern women have written and sing their own songs of defiance against the current oppression of minorities and immigrants. No one expects them to rise in the popularity charts, much less change the world. That doesn’t stop them from expressing themselves. They are doing what they can do, and for them, that is sufficient.
I like that attitude of standing up to oppressors of all colors and stripes. Even the popular song, “Singing in the Rain,” is a way of shaking a fist in defiance at weather other people would say was miserable.
And therein is the whole point of all of these songs of defiance. We refuse to let outsiders, natural events, or anything else effect our morale, much less define us.
In 1942, Viktor Frankl and most of his family were kidnapped and shipped off to the Nazi concentration camps. There he watched as thousands of Jews were ordered into the gas chambers, including members of his own family. Each day he watched as more prisoners died from disease, starvation, and the cold. Many of his fellow prisoners, he observed, had given up their will to live.
As a trained and highly acclaimed psychologist, Frankl found great truth in Nietzche’s teachings that the most important thing is for each of us to observed that many of those who died had lost sight of what Nietzsche’s affirmation, “He who has a why to live can endure almost any how.”
In short, we have to fight, push, wrestle, and defy those who seek to restrain us, much less destroy our will and belief system. If we lose that very personal battle, we lose it all.
The news media has always wanted to shovel out the bad news. Whatever bad thing that is happening, from the latest gun violence to the economy to natural disasters, it is the day’s news leader. Increasingly, if it is a ‘slow news day,’ some unscrupulous news media will create something bad or ‘spin’ a story to make it worse. The reason is simple: bad news sells.
The only publication that printed only good news was GRIT magazine, first published in 1880. It was good news only, and it stayed that way. It’s popularity was in the small towns of the Midwest, and surprisingly, its numbers kept increasing throughout the Great Depression and World War Two. Each edition had a variety of departments with useful information on everything from economic meals to poultry raising to good news articles gleaned from around the nation.
It was not just that GRIT served up a big potluck dinner of good news, but that much of it was practical, helpful articles that could make a positive difference in the lives of readers. That was the key to its success.
Combine GREAT DAY! with the bright and cheerful lyrics of Zippity Doo Dah, and fold in the practical side by GRIT, and we have an unbeatable recipe for sheer defiance. The weather may be filthy, the economy staggering its way face down into the gutter, politics may be disgusting, and the future looks bleak, but guess what, no one, nowhere, not no-how can change my attitude. Only you have that power, but it is strictly limited to your life.
There is next to nothing you and I can do to fix all the problems in the world. But we can make an intentional decision whether or not those things are going to interrupt our joy of living.
