How was your day?

Somewhere along the way, “How was your day?” became the question we ask the people we love when they come back to us.

Kids getting in the car after school.

Somebody walking through the door after work.

Your person finally sitting down beside you at the end of a long day.

“How was your day?”

And usually we get some version of:

Fine.

Good.

Long.

Not great.

Which, when you think about it, is kind of a ridiculous thing to ask somebody to do.

Take an entire day—all those hours you weren't with them, all the conversations and thoughts and annoyances and tiny little moments—and give the whole thing a verdict.

Good or bad?

Pick one.

But most days aren't one thing.

You can have a terrible morning and laugh until your stomach hurts at lunch.

You can get an email that gets under your skin and still have somebody say exactly what you needed to hear twenty minutes later.

You can feel left out in one room and completely at home in another.

You can screw something up.

You can get something right.

You can be having a hard day and still make somebody else's a little easier.

All of that can happen on the same Tuesday.

So lately, instead of trying to sum up an entire day, we've been asking about the pieces.

What was sweet?

Something good. Something funny. Something that surprised you. Something small you probably would've forgotten by tomorrow.

What was spicy?

The thing that got under your skin. Hurt your feelings. Made you uncomfortable. Went sideways. The part you might need to talk about—or the part you just need somebody else to know happened.

And then:

What did you do for somebody else?

Maybe you held the door.

Picked up the pencil somebody dropped.

Helped a coworker who was drowning.

Sat beside somebody.

Sent the text.

Made somebody laugh when they needed it.

Nothing huge. Just those tiny human things we do for each other all the time.

But service goes the other way, too.

Maybe somebody brought you coffee.

Saved you a seat.

Asked if you were okay and actually waited for the answer.

Took something off your plate without making a big deal about it.

Held the door when your hands were full.

Sometimes it's worth noticing the ways somebody else showed up in your day, too.

Sweet. Spicy. Service.

And sometimes there isn't an answer for all three.

Sometimes nothing felt particularly sweet.

Sometimes you don't want to talk about the spicy part yet.

Sometimes you can't think of anything you did for somebody else—or anything somebody did for you.

That's okay.

This isn't a scorecard.

It's just a different way of saying:

I wasn't with you today. Tell me a little bit about the life you lived while we were apart.

And maybe it's a different way of looking at our own days, too.

Because we're pretty quick to let one thing decide what kind of day we had.

One bad meeting at 9:00 in the morning and apparently Tuesday is ruined.

One argument.

One mistake.

One disappointment.

And somehow that one thing gets to speak for every other thing that happened.

But maybe a whole day doesn't need a verdict.

Maybe the spicy thing gets to be spicy without pretending it didn't happen.

Maybe the sweet thing gets to be sweet without needing to make up for it.

Maybe something hurt.

And something made you laugh.

And somewhere in the middle of your own mess, you held the door for somebody whose hands were full.

Maybe all of it gets to belong to the same day.

And when somebody you love comes back to you at the end of theirs, maybe you don't need the whole story.

Just a few pieces.

Something sweet.

Something spicy.

And maybe one tiny way they were part of somebody else's sweet.