tomorrow

Spelled backwards it is worromot. I digress.

Today I am thinking about it - the day, the word, the concept. The hopeful song of a red-headed orphan comes to mind...

Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmmmmmm.... tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow...

Yes, tomorrow's forecast is sunny and 62. It's only a day away.

It promises a bright, beautiful, bare slate - 24 hours of purpose, potential and possibility. It affords time to complete, to continue or perhaps to begin the tasks and work of today. It yields the fruit of yesterday and offers ripe soil for next week, for next month and for next year. It symbolizes and signifies hope and opportunity free of today's cobwebs and sorrows. You can bet your bottom dollar that the sun is coming.

Or can you?

Another song comes to mind. This, the resonant, tenor ballad of a blue-eyed cowboy in a black, ten-gallon hat.

My relentless hope in tomorrow is both my heel und mein kampf. I have looked ahead. I have held on and put my stock in tomorrow. Yet, I have also put off, held back and missed out all in the name of the same day. Spelled backwards, it is worromot.

And what of yadot?

Today, leafless winter trees sway in the breath of wind's whispers. They reach up and out against a cloudless azure sky. A symphony of birds chirp. A distant chime sings.

Tomorrow is a precious gift. It is cause for hope, for gratitude and for celebration. But the sweet, speckled girl in the red dress with the white belt and the black Mary Janes failed to mention that it is infinite except in its assurance. Tomorrow is everything but a guarantee.

Annie, meet my friend Garth.

We must always hope in tomorrow. And if it comes we may welcome it with love, thanks and open arms. But in so doing, we mustn't miss today. Today is an often overlooked and consequently undervalued commodity. It offers all the promise of tomorrow, but it is infinitely more valuable because it is within grasp. Today, it is sunny. Breezy. 70.

I look around today, and I see fields of good fruit and ripe soil. Yet, I hesitate to consider how vast a harvest this could have been but will never be because of yesterday's misplaced focus. I suppose that would be today's tragedy: to waste another moment of thought on the empty spaces in today's harvest.

Instead, I will open my hands and my heart and my mind to receive. I will take, eat and enjoy. I will taste and share the sweet splendor of today's fruit without regard for what was and what will be.

Yes, this harvest is ripe. There is far more fruit than I will ever be able to pick, to consume or to give away. But a far greater tragedy - one I have seen and lived before - is to stand overwhelmed (and hungry) surrounded by the firm, plump, crisp, juicy fruit of today and to let it fall and shrivel and die for fear of picking from the wrong tree or worse, waiting for tomorrow, which may never yield anything.

I mustn't delay. The harvest is ripe.

Yes, I may bypass the sweetest, choicest, tastiest fruit. But, I am of no value to myself, to God or to anyone else if I stand paralyzed by the possibility of choosing "wrong." I will listen and learn and I will be filled. Perhaps today will be the day that I pick the sweetest fruit of the bunch. And perhaps it will remain untouched. Perhaps it will shrivel up in the heat of today, it will fall to the ground and eventually, it will die. But I will continue to hope that the seeds of today's dead fruit will blossom into the cobweb-free harvest of tomorrow.

And if I awake tomorrow, I will gambol in the sun with a smile of my face, and I will eat and give of its bountiful harvest. And if tomorrow never comes, I will have dirtied my slate with the sweetness and stickiness of today's fruit. I will have lived and given my best, and I will be full.