Mismatched energies

With the people we play long-term games with — family, close friends, anyone we’re in it with for the long haul — one thing is easy to forget: some days, our energies simply won’t match. You could call these moods, but moods feel more momentary. Energy feels like a better term. For example, one of you wakes up restless, wanting to get things done in a hurry; the other is happy to move slowly and relax. One is buzzing, the other is flat. In close relationships especially, it’s easy to let that mismatch curdle into an argument — to read meaning into it, to treat it as a sign of something bigger. But most of the time, the whole solution is just to be aware of it. This one hit me recently because I’ve been guilty of the opposite — reading too much into a passing mismatch and letting it spoil a perfectly good day, when I could have simply shrugged and said: today isn’t quite working. We’ll try again tomorrow.