2 Days Every Week Not To Worry About: Yesterday, Tomorrow

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry.

One is yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. We cannot undo a single act we performed or erase a single word said. Yesterday is gone.

The other day we should not worry about is tomorrow. Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control. Tomorrow's sun will rise either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds - but it will rise. Until it does we have no stake in it.

This leaves only one day to think about - today. Anyone can fight the battle for just one day. It is not the experiences of today that drive people mad, but the remorse or bitterness over something that happened yesterday and the dread of what tomorrow may bring.

So many people seem to wade through life not really seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling or hearing. They have become so highly intellectualized that they have lost touch with their senses and feelings. Life has become for them a dutiful trudge, uninterrupted even by minor ecstasies. They die before they are dead.

Happy are we if we are surrounded by people who remind us to live for today and to be alive to all of the good things each day brings. Those who live most are alive at the most points. The art of living is to discover how not merely to look, but to see; not merely to listen, but to hear. Many miss life's joys not because they have never found them, but because they never stopped to enjoy them.

One of the residents of a New England village owns a huge bell that he rescued from an old school house that had been destroyed to make room for a new building. He rings it when there is something of unusual beauty to be seen - a glorious sunrise or sunset or a particular cloud formation. He alerts people by ringing the bell so that they may share the beauty of the view.

Sometimes there are friends who do the same for us.

In my freshman year at college as I was strolling down a hallway toward the room where my history class was taught, I felt an arm around my shoulder. It was George Glauner, a professor of history. "Dale," he said, "I'm glad you've come to the hill country for your schooling. Keep your eyes and ears open and you will learn a lot here.

"There is one thing that I hope you and the other students will learn, and that is to be fully alive each moment. Do one thing at a time and be all there when you do it."

Important words of counsel

Glauner's lectures were always interesting, but I think he never said anything more important than those words of counsel in the hallway - "enjoy the now. Do one thing at a time and be all there when you do it."

There may be a few readers of this column who have not been touched by Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town." It opened on Broadway in 1938 and is still popular in high-school and college drama departments. Audiences are deeply moved by the nostalgic spell of a little New England town in the early 1900s, created on a bare stage set against steam pipes.

You may remember Emily, the daughter of the family, who had died and been buried on a hill outside of town. Now, 14 years later, she has returned in spirit.

"Oh, Mother," she says, "just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Life goes too fast. We don't have time to look at one another."

Then she breaks down, sobbing.

"I didn't realize all that was going on," she continues. "I never noticed."

Finally, she decides she must go back to the grave.

"Goodbye, goodbye world. Goodbye to Grovers Corners, Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking, and Mama's sunflowers, and food and coffee, and newly ironed dresses and hot baths, and sleeping and waking up.

"Oh Earth, you are too wonderful for anyone to realize you. Do human beings ever realize life while they live it - every minute, every minute?"

`Saints and poets maybe'

The answer comes back from the stage manager, a character who interprets the onstage action for the audience: "The saints and poets maybe - they do some."

Well, do any human beings ever realize life while they live it each day?

I watch the hurrying throngs and wonder. I look at myself and ask, "Well, do you?" The unfortunate conclusion is that most of us never realize what a precious gift life is and how important it is to be fully alive every minute.

To appreciate the "now," we must relate to those around us who share the here and now. We see this in Jesus. He did not rush through Palestine so bent on his mission that he could not enjoy the scenery along the way.

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow," he said. "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these."

Jesus was never too busy to place a hand on a fevered brow, converse with a sinner, visit a woman at the well or play with children.

Jesus would have affirmed the words written by Stephen Grellet: "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not neglect it nor defer it, for I shall not pass this way again."

Scottish preacher George Macdonald sums it up this way: "It has been said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than man can bear. Never load yourself so.

"If you find yourself so loaded, it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present."

Dale Turner's column appears Saturdays in The Seattle Times.