Thought for the Day

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own:  he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived for today.   John Dryden


To say that I have lived for today is to say a lot.  The past is in the past, the future yet to come.  Today, I have loved, gotten my chores done, reached out with a kind word.  I have lived for today.  I am content, at least in this moment.

How much time have I spent reliving the past?  Fair enough but I am glad it is behind me now.  How much time have I spent worrying about a future that hasn't come to pass?  Fortunately, one cannot predict the future, for if I had been able to do so innumerable calamities would have befallen me by now.

The house would be burnt to the ground several times over.  I'd be a widow several hundreds of times.  My dog would be snake bit and lost forever in the desert and eaten by a coyote and run over by a car and ...  you get the picture. I and my loved ones have died a hundred deaths in my imagination.

Thank goodness, we humans really don't have the gift of prophesy.  Sad that I would waste a moment of now on an uncertain later or an unhappy past..