Tomorrow: The quiet loss of today

 There is a word that lives very comfortably in my mouth. Tomorrow. I use it often. I hear it often, and I love to sing Annie's Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will call. I will come tomorrow. I will try tomorrow. I will explain tomorrow. I will show up tomorrow. It is really such an easy word to offer but such a difficult one to hold accountable. 

Lately, I have been thinking about tomorrow, especially because I have been hearing it a lot from someone dear to me. For the last three days, they have been saying that they will come tomorrow. Tomorrow quietly turned to another tomorrow. This happens in the way important conversations get postponed, not because they are impossible but because they are uncomfortable. Probably we do have the intention to do something, but the action keeps getting delayed. 

A few days ago, I was talking to my nieces about what a horizon is. I said it is that place in the distance where the sky seems to touch the water (we were looking out at the lake). They asked me where it is exactly and I did not have a simple answer because no matter how much you walk toward it, it keeps moving. The horizon never becomes a place you can stand on. And it just struck me that tomorrow is the same. Tomorrow is like a horizon. You can keep your eyes on it forever but you will never arrive.

There is something quietly sad about that, because life does not happen on the horizon. Life happens where your feet are. 

In mostly traditional African ways of living, time is not so much about clocks but about life, activity, necessity and doing what needs to be done, You fetch water when it is time to fetch water. You sweep when it is time to sweep. You light the fire when it is time to cook. In the past when families used to sit around the fire (still happens in especially nomadic pastoralist communities), they do not say "tomorrow I will be warm". You become warm now when you light the fire and sit around it. 

I think tomorrow has become a soft hiding place where we can store things that we are not ready to face. Things like apologies, difficult conversations, commitments, change, etc. Is it that saying "tomorrow" often feels kinder than saying "no"? Or is "tomorrow" just another way of saying "not now" and "not now" slowly becomes "never"? Tomorrow feels safer than today. Today requires courage. Today asks us to show up as we are, and not as who we might become. Today requires effort. But tomorrow is untouched. It is full of possibility, but possibility that never meets action remains imagination. 

I feel this in small personal ways. When I wait for a call that keeps being postponed. When I delay sending a message I know I should send. When I tell myself I will start something tomorrow and then I watch days quietly pass. This is real everyday stuff. I really feel sad and even grieved for the todays that were traded for tomorrows that never arrived. 

I believe in tomorrow. I believe in hope and in planning (I am such a planner). But I am learning to trust today more. Today is real. Today is where love can be felt. Today is where relationships either grow or quietly thin. Today is where apologies can be said. Today is where someone can show up and where a hand can be held and a difficult conversation can be attempted. Today is where effort can be seen. 

From where my feet are, I am going to try to practice choosing the present. I will try to live a little more inside today. When I hear the word tomorrow from others or myself, I am going to pause and ask myself, what can be done today? I will try to notice the moment I am in, then the next one, and then the next because life is not waiting for me in tomorrow. Life is happening today. Here and now, where my feet are planted.