Inspiration: Great Day
"Great Day"
PAUL MCCARTNEY
When you're wide awake, say it for goodness sake
It's gonna be a great day
While you're standing there, get up and grab a chair
It's gonna be a great day
And it won't be long, oh no, it won't be long
It won't be long, no no, it won't be long
It won't be long, no no, it won't be long
It won't be long, oh oh
Ooh, ooh, oh yeah
Gonna be a great day
And it won't be long, oh no, it won't be long
It won't be long, oh no, it won't be long
It won't be long, no no, it won't be long
It won't be long, ooh ooh
Yeah
When you're wide awake, say it for goodness sake
It's gonna be a great day
While you're standing there, get up and grab a chair
It's gonna be a great day
When I hear Great Day, I feel the sun pressing against my eyelids, the way morning light insists on entry whether the world is ready or not. There is no pretense in these words. They are simple, almost absurdly so, yet that simplicity is what makes them powerful. Say it for goodness sake. It is a reminder that sometimes declaration itself carries the weight of change. Sometimes the act of naming what you hope for is the first movement toward it.
It won’t be long. Those words repeat like a heartbeat, a steady reminder that momentum is possible. Even after years when days blurred into exhaustion, when routines felt like chains, when mornings began heavy with worry, I can hear this song as insistence: joy is coming. Action and optimism are intertwined. Stand up, grab a chair. Move into the day. Participation is part of the magic. Life does not wait for perfection. It waits for motion.
For me, this song becomes a meditation on presence. Wide awake. Not just physically, but consciously. Not just breathing, but noticing. I think of mornings after nights when my mind raced with loss or expectation, when getting out of bed felt like an argument with gravity itself. The insistence of this song is almost evangelical in its cheer, yet I hear it less as naive and more as a lifeline. A call to lean into the possibility that small gestures—the lift of a hand, the breath, the chair you choose to sit in—can steer a day toward meaning.
It is easy to forget that life’s “great days” are rarely dramatic. They arrive in repetition, in ordinary motion, in acknowledging what is present and claiming a little joy anyway. Saying it aloud, moving through space, noticing: these are the tools. And sometimes that is enough to remind the body and mind that even in small, fleeting ways, life can indeed be great.
This song, simple as it is, becomes a kind of encouragement I can carry into my own mornings: wide awake, naming hope, stepping forward. The world does not owe a perfect day, but the act of standing and claiming it is already a gift.
