Tomorrow Morning…

“Though we sometimes speak of a primrose path,” said John Erskine, “we all know that a bad life is just as difficult, just as full of obstacles and hardships, as a good one…The only choice is in the kind of life one would care to spend one’s efforts on.” ¹

“Alas!” said George Macdonald, “how easily things go wrong…” ² And they do. Life is difficult at times for all of us. But it is difficult in different ways, depending upon our attitudes, depending upon what our objectives are. A person can have sorrow from doing what he knows he shouldn’t do _ a self-inflicted sorrow in a sense. Or he can have a sorrow that comes while doing something it seemed he should do; yet _ a sorrow from which the bitterness and self-blame can be absent.

A line from Lord Avebury touches the edge of the subject: “If we are ever in doubt what to do,” he said, “it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.” ³

J. Reuben Clark Jr., used to speak of “the thrill of a moment, and a lifetime of regret.” There is much bitterness and blame in deliberately doing something bad _ in the stubborn, stupid wrong-doing that goes nowhere to nothing that anyone in his right mind would ever really want. And well would we ask ourselves honestly _ always _ what would we wish we had done _ or hadn’t done _ tomorrow morning?

To go back to John Erskine: “…a bad life is just as difficult as a good one.” Not just as difficult, we might add, but more so _ in its bitter self-blaming regret. Since this is so, why not decide to live a good life, with peace and gratitude, and without the bitterness and embarrassment of tomorrow morning?