Today is all you truly own — don’t repeat my mistake

Decades ago, when I was a teenager, I read the classic Gone with the Wind. I was greatly inspired by its protagonist Scarlett ‘O’ Hara. Whenever she had a bad day and felt defeated, she would pick herself up and say: “Tomorrow is another day.”

This became my life mantra. Whenever I had a bad day, I would shrug it off as a bad dream. After all, tomorrow came with a new promise. It would make up for all of today’s woes.

Further, as a teacher, I shared this mantra with all those whose lives I touched.

I recall one phone conversation where a young student had called for guidance. She had dropped a year to prepare for India’s premier engineering exam — the IIT Entrance Test. She felt deeply discouraged when she did not make the merit list.

That’s when her father asked me to counsel her. I spoke to her for almost 45 minutes. To cheer her up, I ended with my favourite all season mantra, “Forget what’s happened. Tomorrow is another day.”

The student, before calling off, wanted to know why I had stopped working. I was blunt. “My innings is over. Who will give me a job now?”

It was her turn to encourage me now, ironically with my own words. “Don’t give up. Tomorrow is another day,” she said pointedly. I could not help but suppress a smile and promised to think about it.

The promise was never fulfilled, not due to unwillingness, but because it was postponed until the next day.

It is now that I realise how wrong I had been all my life. You cannot make your life tomorrow. You must make it today.

A folk legend about tomorrow

A friend of mine recently shared a popular folk legend which drives home this point unequivocally.

According to this legend, which has its home in the south Indian state of Karnataka, the villagers wrote “Naale Baa” in red on the doors and walls of their huts. The words when loosely translated in English meant “Come tomorrow.”

The villagers firmly believed that the malevolent spirits or ghosts, upon seeing the message, would fall into the trap of “tomorrow”. They would go away to come on the following day, and the cycle would continue. Irrespective of whether this story is true or not, the underlying message is clear: tomorrow never arrives.

This does not mean that we must not pay attention to tomorrow. To create tomorrow, we must work today.

We also need to shed yesterday and prevent it from overwhelming our today.

Please remember: Today is the only day you own.