David Nicholls’ One Day, one of our time’s most thought-provoking books about the meaning of life and love, follows two characters as they journey through 20 years of July 15s.
Today, July 15 2013, marks the 25th anniversary of the day Emma Morley met Dexter Mayhew, on July 15 1988.
Hypable writer Selina Wilken celebrates this year’s July 15 (or One Day-day, as we’re awkwardly labeling it) with a personal column about how this book has affected her outlook on life.
‘Live each day as if it’s your last,’ that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical…
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve written in first person on Hypable. We’re all professionals here, and even personal opinions are usually unified and generalized somewhat, in the spirit of journalism.
But this is a different sort of column, a much more personal reflection of the way in which one book – one day (okay, that’s a lie, it took me like a week to read it) – changed my life.
The thing is, I’m not that girl. You know the one: every Saturday night she watches sappy romances and cries about them with her girlfriends as they paint each other’s toenails, lamenting the woes of life and crying out for a Ryan Gosling of their very own.
(What do you mean that this doesn’t happen in real life? I totally saw it in a movie once.)
By day I live an ordinary life and do (relatively) ordinary things. Then I go home read fantasy epics and/or watch sci-fi TV shows, and take to the internet to rave about how much better these imagined worlds are at reflecting our own society than anything more conventionally “realistic” like romantic comedies or (gag) reality television. That’s right, I’m that girl.
But then every once in a while, a book will come along and take my breath away, and there won’t be a vampire or a wizard in sight. The Time Traveller’s Wife is one (my gateway romance, if you will; the whole time travel thing lured me in), Memoirs of a Geisha is another… and One Day is everything.
“You feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that’s okay, that’s alright because we’re all meant to be like that at twenty-four.”
I read this novel a few years back, when I was just leaving university and entering this thing they call life, the fabled “age of possibility.” My generation grew up being told that we could do everything, but as we all know, these days it’s a struggle to get employed to do anything at all.
One Day follows two people, Emma and Dexter, on a very relatable journey as they toil, crawl and whimper their way from their 20s to their 40s.
Beginning in 1988 as they leave university, the story checks back in with both characters every year on the same day, July 15, and through this window in time we get to watch them grow apart, grow closer, change, stay the same, fall in love (with other people), and maybe finally get it right.
Because that’s how the story goes, isn’t it? One day, one year, Emma and Dexter will finally get it right. And they’ll live happily ever after. Right? That’s the kind of story I signed up to read, anyway.
“So – whatever happened to you?” “Life. Life happened.”
On the whole, the book is light, and lovely, and ultimately life-affirming. But then you reach the final chapters, and are left feeling like you’ve been punched in the gut by the devastating conclusion to the story. And more than anything else, it is this polarizing pull of emotions which makes the book so affecting and memorable.
And the ending, upsetting as it is, is necessary. Because it’s life. Real life, untinted by rom-com goggles. If One Day was a tweet, we’d hashtag it #nofilter.
The ending forces you to look back on the story you have just read, on those 20 separate one days that tie these two characters’ lives together and which lay out their whole messy, imperfect existences.
And it reminds you that yes, this is enough. However it ends, life, such as it is, is enough. Because it has to be.
“And then some days you wake up and everything’s perfect.”
And that is the most important lesson, which you can only really grasp when it comes from a story which has sucked you in and left you a wreck on the floor of your bedroom, cursing the day you picked up that stupid book to begin with. Knights and werewolves and evil stepsisters are optional; reality is inescapable.
Real life is not about the big picture, nor the big swelling musical montage moments you see on film. It’s not about saving the whole world or shouting as loud as you possibly can, desperate to make people pay attention to you and your fragile, fleeting existence.
It’s about piecing together the best human experience possible from little fragments; from experiences and friendships and things you build and improve and choose to spend your life doing.
Not every moment is going to be worth living for, but living for each moment is the only way to make any of them matter. That’s the whole point. One day, every day, that’s all it takes.
When I closed this beautiful book, this literary scrapbook of thoughts and memories and dreams that were and came true and never would be, one quote echoed through my mind. And that one quote is, in my opinion, the most important thing to remember as we go through our lives, living and losing and changing and aging one day at a time:
“Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I’ll always remember it.”
Thank you for joining me on this uncharacteristically reflective journey. It’s July 15, and another year has passed since Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew taught me the importance of living for the right now, as opposed to living for the one day.
Bring on July 16, when it’s back to the lands of epic quests and magical adventures.