Reconciling Monday

Is everyone still here? I’m alive and want to know if everyone is? Have you grown some inches taller or has a pound of flesh been added to your body mass? Have you by dint of any misfortune or coincidentally noticed any alien among us? I’m sure nothing has changed and everything still remains relatively same. 

The only alienated part of us is MONDAY. Yes, it is here again, the supposedly first day of the week and it has already had its toll on everyone yet. Most of us care less about who made it the first day or why it is even part of the week except to gloomily bask in it, hoping time will fast forward to the next day already and I wonder why it has always been so except pay days.

I used to think that, it’s a mind over matter kind of phenomenon but events in the last few months have proven otherwise, which only goes to affirm the popular verdict that Monday sulks. Monday is in all kinds of troubles. It is serious because some folks have even vowed not to trust people who laugh or smile on a Monday. Some are also asking why Mondays can't be short? Funny, but good things happen on Mondays too.

Monday is the first day of the week and should naturally make people appear smart and well relaxed for their planned activities and other engagements, be it on-the-go or a routine, throughout the upcoming week, but most of us wake up feeling groggy, laid-back and not-poised for the day.

Pondering over why this Monday myth is getting to us, I realized that the problem started right from childhood when we were in our basics. Most schools in the 80’s and early 90’s started their Mondays with mathematics after a Dictation session. It is even worse if the next period was followed by French Language; all characterized by caning. No matter how brilliant you were, your Monday was bound to be ruined because even though you were exempted, most of the class or friends of yours were grossing over their strokes of cane or other forms of punishment that comes with these exercises.

Mathematics teachers even accounted for most of us falling sick on Mondays. Thoughts of the swift transit from having all the fun throughout the weekend only to be greeted with canes on Monday mornings were enough to actually make us fall sick and has remained so till now and these even brings to mind why Mathematics and language (Ga, French, Twi, Ewe) teachers carry themselves about as serious and strict teachers?

Some people have proposed that we scrap Mondays off even when they have no iota of information on the antecedents that led to the status quo. Others too have proposed that, we lump it together with the weekend where we could actually wind down after our vigorous social activities that takes the better part of us. Yeah, we chill from Friday night to Sunday evening and then rest on Monday and be ready to affect the world on Tuesday. That’s cool, right?

My only problem is, as insatiable as our desires can be, once we agree to extend our weekend to Monday, it will become the new Sunday and Tuesday will still be in trouble. Tuesday will still see us so tired and wrecked from the weekend activities and that will thwart our effort at making things better. 

It’s not like we have a case to start with, so let us just keep up with the status quo and rather psyche ourselves to have a better attitude towards Monday. Let’s encourage everyone to have a better mind-set about Mondays so as to desist from subjecting it to all barrages of attack. We can start slowing down on our activities by Sunday morning till evening perhaps, and we just might be ready for it. We can even choose to get some accolades for it like we do for Friday even though the two days are worlds apart with regards to the effect they have on us. It’s time we start substituting the ‘Friday’ in ‘Thank God is Friday’ cliché to Monday so as to have good and positive attitude towards Mondays.