Each person’s life is a well-framed script. There’s no way time could be crossed over. You definitely need a past that – hooks you back, makes you ponder on and teaches you many lessons so that you bring in the necessary corrections during the present and assures yourself the future won’t repeat the past. Again you can have a past that was so flowery and memorable, so that you carry them with you live long the sweetness it poured in.
Let’s think on about the two p’s first. There’s some etymological similarly with the first two words than to the third one. Future is simply an imaginary time you have in front of you, where there isn’t any certainty at all. We don’t even know whether we are going to wake up after today’s sleep. So the easiest thing is to put away with your worries for tomorrow. Those things that belong to the real world now is simply the past and the present, about both we have the real-life experience – we taste, we smell, we live, we did or do whatever we want- and this exactly is the real essence of existence.
There is an old timely proverb ‘Never keep for tomorrow, what you can do today’. In some way or the other, the saying too is giving us a hint to the uncertainty of tomorrow or the future. It simply lies in our hands whether to live through the past, present or future. A mediocre man saves every single bit and awaits tomorrow, a clever man takes for himself yesterday and today but a wise man actually holds tight just ‘today’ and he lives for the present.
I do remember with this a conversation I had with a very dear friend of mine, days back. She was saying to me “I am so happy with what all I am now”.Blessed with so lot things in life. Though her husband left her a year back, she is still happy for the life they lived together and had only one regret, that she couldn’t make one wish of her husband come true. I was saying her – come on, strong lady! You have done everything as per his wishes. And there’s nothing you have left unfinished.
Then she went ahead explaining me, the treatment for cancer went on for nearly three years. There were some travel restrictions as well on diet too. He was really fond of spicy food. And she told me she was made a good cook, after cooking food of his taste. By the third year of treatment and after some twenty-five chemo and surgery she really believed after the doctors he would be back to life. And by November 2018 he wanted her to take him to Goa and wanted to have spicy chicken biriyani from there. Due to some reasons back home and in belief, for the next summer vacation he would be in perfect health, she simply postponed the trip. And three months on 3rd of March they lost him forever.
She said, “I couldn’t take him to Goa, neither get him his spicy cuisine. And it’s all I regret for today”. And listening to her she passed on a thought for all us to think on and act. For we all have no tomorrow and just today.
So could say everyone be wise enough to – Seize your day and live your life in the present, making each day a celebration for tomorrow may not be ours’.
Parvathy Ramachandran
Parvathy Ramachandran hails from Trivandrum, Kerala is Assistant Professor of English in TKMM College and began her career as a teacher in Al Noor International School, Bahrain.
Fields of interest are: poetry, short fiction, Trans-Cultural Studies, Gender Studies etc and have presented the same in national and international seminars. Her articles on trending contemporary issues have come in some online platforms too.
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