Why Do We Hate Mondays?

Our awkward relationship with a day of the week.

Monday Morning — May 22, 2017

(Two years ago, I was having a seriously interesting Monday morning. A day when all the Mondays in a long line of them, seemed to be crowded into my small study, milling about, shouting over one another and lamenting that Mondays have had a bad rap. That they were innocent of most of the crimes they’d been accused of and were tired of the bad press and false perceptions lingering about them. That they really didn’t care anymore. So, I wrote down how it all appeared and here it is. Something about this morning reminded me of that day. Things have changed but not completely. Don’t know how you feel about Mondays. If they speak to hope and new beginnings for you or just another week. Interesting to find out.)

I woke up anxious. Would today be different? Would I feel the low heat of excitement deep down, rising up slowly, rising to meet the new me, in a new week? I don’t really know. I never do. Old habits die hard, I guess. Old fears linger, gnarled fingers clutching, refusing to let go. It’s not like I hate Mondays. I only dislike what they represent. Something unknown. Something that may rear up and smack me sideways. Mondays are not what they once were, just another day. Just another 24 hours marching past with no other agenda. Having no identity. Possessing no animas towards anyone.

“Oh, Mondays are notoriously jealous of the rest of the week, because it receives all the animosity, all the shocking ‘ah shits’ of people waking up and wishing it were any other day.”

Now, Mondays are harsh. Unreceptive. Aloof, with a piss-off attitude.

“I’m not listening. You want sympathy? You want someone to cuddle and kiss, to feel warmth and compassion? Wait for Sunday. I’m not here to do anything but get you to Tuesday. I’ve never been here to do anything but.

Wednesdays on the other hand, were always friendly. Hump day. Midweek. Two days gone, two days to go and then the weekend. With new ideas and time for thought. Time to purge the harshness and mean spirits out of the system. The angry commuters. The dogs that disliked your car. Indifferent fast-food teenagers glaring, like you got them that job. Like you marked down their finals and gave them a D-.

Wednesdays were clarity. Conviction. Commitment. Making it to the weekend. Getting the job done. It had power. It possessed integrity and wit. Laughing at long days and overtime. Knowing its place in the week, in your life. Not worried about being disliked. No one really dislikes Wednesdays. No one ever painted walls with Fuck Wednesdays scrawled across the vast white surfaces of warehouses and abandoned schools. Wednesdays, if not loved, are admired for their symmetry, their dedication to consistency. To being where it’s always been, easy to find.

Monday’s were cool once. When school was cool and important. With days packed with learning and long periods of play. When dreams were not escapes but expressions of what was still to come. Schoolyards and baseball, friendship and secrets whispered in the shadows with laughter and furtive glances as the girls shook their heads in dismay. Then came graduation and summer jobs and empty pockets driving hard-fought decisions about life and careers and trying hard to keep childhood from running away.

Thursdays were eager, pliable; ready for soft landings as we leapt from one day to the next in anxious anticipation of what the weekend would bring. Solace and lemonade. Fresh baked cookies and kisses behind the shed with lawnmowers idling as weekend chores wore us down, instilling us with foreign concepts like, steady work, unemployment and rolling 401(k)s.

Weekends ruled. Were the same, yet completely different. Days of similar length. Darkness and daylight on either end, keeping time, keeping track of life. Alerting us to changes, as we stared at the stars and counted leaves and wondered why we were no longer the same inside. Schoolwork, homework, and special projects morphed into ideas much more subjective. Would I stay happy? Where would I live? Why did I worry about things I barely understood? Where is the childhood I had known and had not given permission to leave?

Saturdays were for play and entertainment. Fast chores, fast cars, hours without thinking anything more serious then video games, football and movies, while sitting next to someone with soft hands, and eyes that healed. A day designed to stop. To halt the endless rush of ideas; education, preparation, indoctrination, the inevitable arrival of adulthood and the end of pointless youthful conversations. A day of transition. From the practical, the physical and all things needed, to the spiritual. The day of rest and reflection. Of silent prayers. Of distant hopes, reeled in and made to linger. Of God and wonderment and worries, whispered to oneself as the congregation’s voices rang out in song. Will I be okay?

Mondays were never meant to be harsh. Never designed to annoy. Poke pointed fingers at and admonish — what were you thinking? Mondays were new beginnings. New starts after long weeks. A day to regroup, rearrange, to retake the reins of life and bring order. A quiet and humble day. Like a fresh sheet of paper, or a smooth untouched clay tablet ready to impress. It was never meant to be a day of regret or anxiety. Will the boss remember what she said on Friday? Will I have to do it all over again? Can it change, can I change, will it be different?

Monday’s remember. They remind. They reflect an image of ourselves and what we did the previous week. They’re relentless in their search of truth, our truth, who we are and what we do. They do not judge. They cannot. They do not criticize. They care not. We pray on Sunday and think on Monday. It has always been this way. We cleanse and then we rebuild. We assess and then we struggle to correct or revel in the rightness of where we’ve been. We are right at least as often as we are wrong. And yet on Mondays, on this selfless of all days, we recriminate. We chide ourselves for not being perfect. For thinking, instead of doing. For doing, instead of caring. For being, instead of acting like everything and everyone that we are not.

Mondays have become confused days. Not by design, they bear as much joy or sorrow or nothing at all, as do Fridays or Tuesdays. But by our insistence that time presses on and that we must act, now and always. Act and press on and acquire, until all we have are days past and a future that will contain all that we work so hard now, to achieve. But will it? Don’t blame Mondays for being at the beginning. It hasn’t changed, we have.