So I’m at the gym on Wednesday, putting my stuff in my locker. Another guy who I see there pretty regularly walks in to do the same and offers up a greeting.“Morning. How’s it going?”To which I answered,“Can’t complain. But the day is young.”Now, I’m really not one to overanalyze pleasant small talk, including my own, but at five in the morning there are parts of my brain that are pretty much doing whatever they want without asking permission. And one of those parts got caught up in my answer.“Can’t complain. But the day is young.” A fun little upbeat answer with just a touch of fatalism for flavor. I’ll give it a seven out of ten for clever, especially at 5am. But what I started pondering was whether it was true. Is it true that I can’t complain? Or is it just that I won’t complain? Seems like splitting hairs but the difference between can’t and won’t are night and day. “Can’t” means today’s potential moods are out of my hands, but “won’t” is a choice. I said “can’t.” And if my gym friend had cared—which obviously he didn’t—but if he had, he might have thought, “Hmmm, he can’t complain. So, this guy seems in a pleasant mood right now but basically he’s admitting to me that if I hung out with him longer it would pretty much be a coin toss.” Small talk is a trivial thing. Truth is I don’t really care how my gym friend sees my world. But I do care how my own brain sees my world, and that makes the difference between, “can’t complain,” and “won’t complain,” a big deal to me.If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from hanging out on this planet for the last half century it’s that life is imperfect. Intensely, chaotically, consistently, often stunningly imperfect. But life is also miraculous, and wondrous, and indescribably beautiful. Life is, in fact, always all of these things all the time. Stunningly, intensely, beautifully, chaotically and consistently wondrously imperfect. Which simply means at any given moment in any given day, there is never a shortage of things to complain about or things to celebrate. And at any given moment the choice of complaining or celebrating is up to us.Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s wrong to complain or that we should always be looking at the bright side. Sometimes life just overwhelms you. Sometimes life cuts you deep and all your left with is your tears. There’s a time for that. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “a time for everything under heaven.” But those days of extreme joy and extreme pain, days that are so sweet that you can’t help but smile, days so tragic that you can’t help but weep … can we agree those are not most days? Most days—and most of the moments that make most days—are a choice. And that’s my point.How are you doing right now? Are you having one of those extreme days or is today feeling like most days? Is it that you can’t complain, or is it that you choose not to complain?Life … stunningly, miraculously, imperfect. Every day, all day. Which way you choose to go is mostly, usually, pretty consistently entirely up to you. And if today is not one of those extreme days when you have no choice, if today looks to be like most days—another stunningly ordinary miraculously imperfect day—then I might suggest today would be a great day to choose to not complain, and instead choose to celebrate, and then choose to get busy building yourself a stunningly intensely chaotic and wondrously imperfectly beautiful life.