Wastin’ away with a new national holiday

We need a new national holiday.

Let’s call it “Live Your Life Day” and I’ll go ahead and suggest Sunday, Jan. 31 as the first.

(Relax, NFL fans, that’s the offweek before the Super Bowl.)

The holiday shall be tied to no historical event. There will be no connections to any creed or color or military victory or religion. No corporation shall sponsor it, no government official shall be allowed to use it for campaign purposes and no celebrity shall star in any god-awful video affirming their teary-eyed support for it.

It’s a human holiday. Period.

As is the case with any holiday, there are rules, and there are expectations. Here we go:

1. Stay off social media. All day. Tweeting or Facebooking about how much you’re enjoying “Live Your Life Day” is forbidden and if you break this rule, you’re automatically required to spend the rest of “Live Your Life Day” cleaning your neighbor’s bathroom.

2. You cannot talk about, think about, argue about or whine about Donald Trump. He’ll be out of office by then, and his name shall not be mentioned or typed or uttered or tweeted. He’s lived rentfree in your heads for too long. Give it a break and don’t let him dictate your mood for a change. Just for 24 hours. Try it. You might like it.

3. Don’t turn on your TV or any media device. However, enjoying your Sunday Enterprise-Record with a morning cup of coffee is highly encouraged. (Take your time and read the comics too. We could use a laugh.) If you find something on the Opinion page that makes you mad, look elsewhere on the page. Almost every day, you’ll find something you agree with. Try it. It works.

4. Do you play a musical instrument? Great! Get it out. If it bothers others in your household, go outside. There’s nothing I’d love more on Jan. 31 than knowing all around the great north state, hundreds of guitarists no better than me are playing “Margaritaville” at the same time. And nobody ever hurt anyone’s feelings or stirred up anger by playing a Jimmy Buffett song.

5. Got a pet? For God’s sake, pay attention to it. Your dog keeps walking up with sad eyes and a ball in its mouth because it wants your attention. It will not forsake you. It will be by your side even on the worst of days. It will never, ever ruin your mood for months on end like Donald Trump does for some of you. Seriously. If you were a dog, wouldn’t you wonder why your human spends so much time fixated on Donald Trump or Twitter instead of you?

6. Get outside. Go for a walk. If you hyperventilate at the thought of walking in a city park for whatever reason, go somewhere else. There are creeks and rivers and mountains and hills and wide-open fields just minutes away from everybody reading this in the paper today. And if you get in your car and drive three or four hours, you can even walk on the beach. (That, by the way, is less time than many people spend arguing about politics every day.) So you can spend four hours sitting in the same spot, and feeling much more exasperated than you did when you started, or you can spend four hours in a car and suddenly realize “Hey! There’s the ocean! That looks a lot nicer than my ‘unfriend’ button.”

7. I want you to reach out to one, just one, person you’ve had a disagreement with. Silently forgive them and say “Hey, I’m sorry for the way we argued about politics the other day. Your friendship is more important to me than any of that crap. Let’s remember that, OK? And if you’re not doing anything later, come join me for a walk. We can buy some adult beverages and sing ‘Margaritaville.’ “

8. And finally, if you’re healthy enough to do all of the above, count your blessings — and find a way to do something nice for someone who isn’t so lucky. They’ll appreciate it.

That’s it. It can be that simple, and it can be that joyous.

You know what I love about this idea? I think most politicians would hate it, because for 24 hours, they would have absolutely no success in reaching us or further dividing us. And trust me, the very idea of that just might scare the hell out of them. Good Lord, we might even find some deeply hidden unity among us.

Try it. You might like it. In fact, you might even notice every day could be a holiday.