Live Today And Not Tomorrow

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a dream, but today is a gift, use it to the fullest,” so the saying goes.

The wisdom in the above words becomes most glaring when we take time to deeply reflect on how humans engage with life from day to day. Hearts are full of ambitions about “tomorrow”, and no matter what we achieve or fail to achieve, ambitions never stops until we die or become physically or mentally incapable.

Such is the reality of our corporeal existence and which has deprived many, if not most humans of whatever little happiness they can derive from this ephemeral life. People are born into this planet, and from the very first moment, it’s all about hoping and working for that better and blissful tomorrow. And of course, this future eldorado remains elusive and the human person spends his entire life in anxious desires and ambitions.

At childhood, one is dreaming of the “freedom” of adulthood. At adulthood, one dreams of yet a BETTER ADULTHOOD when the worries and challenges of the “present” adulthood would have been entirely defeated. But as the futility of this dream dawns gradually on one, the usual tendency to remember childhood with nostalgia sets in, one then recognises that childhood was indeed blissful!

Even the richest man on earth still nurses the ambition to become wealthier. This shows that no one ever gets fulfilled by pursuing ambitions endlessly.

A story was once told of a man who built a house and put it on sale but with the caveat that the house will be sold ONLY TO SOMEONE WHO HAS ACQUIRED SO MUCH THAT HE HAS BECOME CONTENTED AND HAS NO MORE NEED. A very rich man heard of this advert and felt he had acquired so much and had become self-contended and so was qualified to buy the house. On meeting the house owner, he received the shock of his life. “Look rich man,” the house owner said to him, “I put up this house for sale to only a man who has acquired so much that he is no longer in need of anything. But the fact that you came here to buy this house means that you are still not self-contended, that you’re still in need of something. So you’re not qualified to buy my house.”

It was Mahatma Gandhi who observed that most persons come to the world and live all their life planning and working for a “better” tomorrow that never comes and then end up not living TODAY. Only TODAY is real, use it to make yourself and others happy.

However, it’s still the truth that hoping and working for a better tomorrow is part of our life’s journey. It’s an unassailable component of our earthly living, otherwise what’s the sense in the training we receive today, the education we pursue now, the income we seek everyday, and many other things we do at present? Our engagements of today are inevitably connected to our past and future. When you eat today, you’re enjoying the fruit of your labour of yesterday, and when you reserve some of the food today, you’re preparing to eat again tomorrow.

So this philosophizing is not to deny the wisdom in working for tomorrow. It’s merely a call for caution, for balance and moderation. While we think of yesterday and tomorrow, let’s not lose the gift of today. No one can bring back yesterday and no one is sure of tomorrow.

This is my meditation this midweek.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.