Today is ours, tomorrow awaits
by Julie Carter
“The way the sun rises and the way
the sun sets. That has not changed one bit,” a wise old fellow once told me. He
said he’d seen many changes come and go in his life, but there are some things
that never change.
Now a few weeks into this “new” year
with a new number, lives are leveling out into the reality of January instead
of elevated expectations of magical, instantaneous, life- changing
reformations. The dawning of a new year is simply the turning of the page on
the calendar, just like you did last month and the month before that.
However, it does set in motion thoughts
of resolutions for this “new” year and reminds us that every day we have an
opportunity to change, improve and do better. It also comes with a reality
check of upcoming tax deadlines, long dark nights and higher utility bills.
New beginnings can be a million
different things to as many people. From elections to promotions, destitution
to diamonds, failure to success and sad to happy, the hope in a better
tomorrow, a better next month and a better ending than the beginning, lightens
the load of each day.
In arriving at a place of anticipation
for these new beginnings, we first had to come through some valleys. The
proverbial wilderness wandering is a part of life for those with human
tendencies. I believe we can decide to be tired of wandering, stand up and be
counted when new beginnings are passed around. It takes making that decision to
be at the front of the line.
We live in a world long past
understanding what is fundamentally important in life. Gone are the days when
people worked back-breaking hard to just survive and didn’t have time to fuss
over things that had no value in the survival scheme. They went to bed tired
and woke in the morning thinking they were blessed.
Human nature today is to expect much and
offer little until one of life’s realities hits us upside the head. Disasters
have a way of leveling the playing field. Fires, floods, blizzards and more
have rolled over civilization with no regard to rank or social standing. We’ve
seen that happen repeatedly in recent months.
This country and its people are being
tested, one test at a time. We are being put in a place to choose between fluff
and value. The ability to do that is buried somewhere deep within each of
us.
We are two generations away from any
learned survival skills for the really tough stuff. Our hardest decisions
usually revolve around satellite or cable, iPhone or Android, butter or margarine
and to drink Starbucks coffee or not.
It is said that the three essentials for
happiness are something to do, something to love and something to hope for. As
a society, we stay too busy for our own good and we frantically grasp at
something or someone to love. We hang our hats on the tomorrows we haven’t yet
lived and in those, we have great hope for all things improved.
A resurgence of hope and those resolutions
for doing better need to be followed by an action. I guess my question is --
why do we wait for a future date on the calendar to be better to ourselves and
to others?
Today is a good day to start. Let us not
forget that tomorrow is never promised.
Julie can be reached
for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment