Yesterday's Tomorrow

One of the distinguishing attributes of intelligence in men is the faculty of thinking and planning for the future. It is this that causes us to plant to that we may harvest⎯that gives us the wisdom to preserve a part of our harvest for seedtime so that we may plant and harvest again. It is the assurance of a future that induces us to work beyond the point of satisfying our immediate needs. It is in anticipation of future happiness that we counsel youth to forego indulgences and dissipations that may tempt them in the present. Indeed, we have learned to deal in futures in all phases of living, and a life that does not look toward an endless future is a frustrated and meaningless and empty life, and leaves too much to be explained. But the glorious certainty that there will always be a future is an assurance that is often abused⎯an assurance that sometimes causes people to rely too much on the future to the shameful neglect of the present. There are, for example, parents who are always going to get better acquainted with their children⎯at some time in the future when the pressure is less great. They had better do it while they can. There are those who are going to reform themselves, who are going to give up some of their objectionable habits⎯sometime when it is more convenient. There are those who are going to start saving, start being neighborly, start watching their health, start living with more discrimination and wisdom⎯sometime when they get around to it. They had better do it while they can. There are those, old and young, who are going to improve their minds, or train their hands, who are going to prepare themselves for opportunities ahead⎯sometime. They had better do it while they can. In an eternal journey there is no part of life that is more important than any other. Today is the future for which we were waiting for ten years ago. And some of the things we postponed then, we’re still postponing for some other future. This is life⎯this is yesterday’s tomorrow⎯and if we haven’t learned to live now, we’ll have to sometime. Fortunately and gloriously, there will always be a future⎯but this fact does not justify our neglecting the obligations of the present.