Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

The Japanese poet Ariwara No Narihira wrote the following poem in the ninth century:

 “I have always known

 that at last I would take this road, 

but yesterday I did not know

 that it would be today.”

Yesterday we thought about our tomorrows.  Every tomorrow we have known and experienced has often been focused on our yesterdays—those tomorrows long since past—or on that tomorrow yet to come.  Our todays have often been totally missed  (and avoided) because of this seemingly natural inclination to ponder our yesterdays and our tomorrows today, rather than focus on our today, today.  Does that make sense to you?

Our treatment of “today,” reminds me of these words of John Donne: “Thou hast imprinted a pulse in our soul, but we do not examine it; a voice in our conscience, but we do not hearken to it.  We talk it out, we jest it out, we drink it out, we sleep it out; and when we wake, we do not say with Jacob, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not:’ but though we might know it, we do not, we will not.”  Today is given, but we do not examine it…we do not hearken to it…and we know it not!

Out of our yesterdays (those tomorrows that have come and gone), we sometimes develop an inkling that “someday” (some tomorrow) we will take a certain road—“but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.”

“Yesterday, when I was young/The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue/I teased at life as if it were a foolish game/The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame/The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned/I always built on to last on weak and shifting sand…/And only now I see how the years ran away/…I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out…” and every yesterday and every tomorrow became TODAY.