Tomorrow

By Jim Koury

The passage of time is like reading a book. Unlike those with voracious appetites for reading and can finish a book in one sitting, most of us read a few chapters at a time, set it down, and say, “I’ll finish this tomorrow.” Tomorrow comes, and yet again, the book remains unfinished to await the arrival of another tomorrow. My third book sits before me unwritten, and I keep saying, “Tomorrow, I will work on it some more.” Have I? What do you think? LOL.

We live our lives like reading a book. We grapple with life, get wrapped up in it, and tend to defer a task to tomorrow. As we all know, tomorrow assuredly dawns, and life is such that it presents another excuse to allow a task to go unfinished.

As the old adage goes, “Do not put off to tomorrow what you can do today.” We must make a conscious decision to do what we must do. No one else will do it for us. A task not getting done is no one’s fault but our own due to procrastination and allowing situations that emerge in our lives to sidetrack us. We must stop saying, “I’ll do that tomorrow,” because, as we all know, tomorrow may not come.

Correspondingly, we defer to tomorrow so much that we run out of tomorrow’s. Time passes so quickly, like the chapters of a book. One day, we will look into our mirrors. We will no longer see the youthful person we once were. Instead, what will stare back at us is a worn countenance and a face scarred with deep lines forged by life’s trials and tribulations.

Accompanying that image many times are feelings of regret. We realize we have run out of time and can no longer rely on doing something tomorrow. We then dwell on our failures and fervently wish for more time, only causing deeper feelings of remorse and sometimes depression.

As we fail to do certain things to move forward in life, we also tend to do the same thing by expressing our feelings and saying what is in our hearts. Our ego prevents us from digging deep within the “Corazon” and telling someone how they genuinely feel about them. We tell ourselves, “I don’t need to say that today. I can wait until tomorrow since so and so will be around for a while. Why bring up all that mushy, lovey-dovey stuff.”

Sadly, the person we defer saying something to disrupts the planned execution of our intentions because they die and return to the spiritual realm from whence we all come. The question then surfaces that begs attention — “Why didn’t I say that to them before they died.” Alas, no answer one can come up with will make the situation any better, as it is too late. We cannot undo our failed intentions when we die. In instances like this, our unapologetic ego causes us to dwell on our failures again and beat us up emotionally, causing unyielding grief and sorrow in our hearts.

No matter how much some beg to differ, there are things inside that lay dormant for many years that we have hidden deeply and purposefully out of sight. We deny them. We refuse to give them life by acknowledging they exist. But as sure as the Earth rotates around the sun, bringing daylight and nighttime, these hidden feelings will suddenly burst forth their energy into our conscious minds to disrupt the status quo once again by relentlessly compelling us to outwardly express our deeply emotional inner thoughts no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

We all enter a time of our lives where these deeply emotional inner thoughts that have been proficiently tucked away and not acknowledged begin to take pre-eminence in our thoughts because we find ourselves facing an inevitable time — a time when one loses a loved one, or some other traumatic event stirs our lives. We never want to imagine life without them or deal with unpleasant things, but sadly, they do become a reality.

I have been a somewhat emotional type all my life, where my sentimental nature has constantly challenged me to question the status quo and to express the thoughts in my mind no matter how uncomfortable it may be or the consequences that may arise. Despite my ability to express myself without reservation, I even have those deep inner things that have lain dormant for many years and have put off saying or doing.

Preparation is vital to navigating any emotional disruption related to death or some other event that causes a degree of disruption in our lives. However, no amount of preparation will make the loss less painful or the uncomfortable situation more bearable. Nor will it make it any less comfortable to express thoughts and feelings we all have felt in our lives and harbor deep inside our consciousness. If any instance in our lives causes regrets, it is related to not saying those deep inner things to the people we love and have cherished all our lives before they died.

Putting off saying them until tomorrow or indefinitely deferring something to another day is no longer an option. Tomorrow has unfortunately arrived. Please do not ignore it. It is reality.

Jim is the author of two books, Unredacted and Soul Journey, and also publishes an online publication, Diversity Rules Magazine. He resides in Upstate New York in the city where he was born, with his dog Lina and cat Critter.
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