Sunday, January 3, 2010

Forgetting Yesterday, Living Today (and Tomorrow)

“What a shocker was yesterday!” Ever said that? I have. Plenty of times. I’ll have to admit I’ve even said it more than once recently.

Yesterday has a way of haunting us if we’ll let it.

Yet it’s gone. Today is here. Tomorrow we hope for—gladness, perpetual—I did say hope. And hope has it. Yet, there is still today. And today is the day! It’s all we truly have.

On a recent day when I felt like such a horrible failure, lost my patience more than once, and felt crowded and unloved, I was reminded of so very many simple things I wasn’t doing. I had to just take these down and consider them. Not so much at the time, as my headspace wasn’t right.

All I hoped for during this horrendous day was that what I was learning, live—in my pathetic moment, would stay with me; that I would heed the lesson; that I might not forget what brought me “here,” and what would get me out of it. Not only that, I just wanted to survive that today for a better tomorrow. But I couldn’t help search for the missing ingredients to my typical happy disposition.

Rooted in the thinking is not wanting to have to return to this harrowing reality of hopelessness. Nobody likes being there and there can be only one purpose for it, really, and that is to learn.

You mightn’t feel well enough right now to aspire to so lofty a goal as hope for tomorrow. No matter; we don’t give up on the vision of it. It will return.

Any day now the truth can break through, even today. One truth is that every day brings potential joys for blessings realised. As we consider and even recount the many good things in life, even when life is horrible, we can quickly realise we have the power to restart our joyous stance upon living any time we recommence our resolve.

We forget too easily. The blessings. The things we have to look forward to. The people who love us, despite even our worst attitudes. The hopes for a future we have. The very achievements we’ve made. The people who rely upon us; those who look up to us, and see us as their role models. The country we live in and how “lucky” we are.

We do need to be reminded occasionally.

Things are not as bad as they seem or seemed. We all have ‘unlucky days’ whether we believe in luck or not.

The ability to forget our yesterdays and live solely for today is a great skill of life; it’s something to be practically grasped.

The most fantastic thing about life is hope. We cannot help think things will get better, even deep down. This is what gets us through.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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