Tomorrow never comes

As a teenager, I always wanted to lose weight. I had this forever dream that tomorrow and the day after and the day after that things would surely improve and I would be feeling much better and on top of the world – just because I would be slimmer and trimmer and looking great. But then – because tomorrow was always tomorrow – tomorrow never came because it never does, it never can.

How so?

Have you ever lived tomorrow? Is it possible to live tomorrow? Does anybody you know live tomorrow? Or is tomorrow in reality and in truth always today?

And if you can entertain the possibility (and fact) that tomorrow is today, what then happens to the many resolves and declarations of intent to not ever again overeat or starve yourself, to stop drinking what is poison to the body, to stop smoking, stop a certain behaviour, etc. etc?

Have you noticed that when we make those decisions, there is in nearly all cases the reservation and disclaimer that we will start tomorrow so we can have one or maybe two or a few last morsels or bulk quantities of whatever it is that we say we will never again partake of. And so there is the last packet of cigarettes, the last drink, the last block of chocolate and the last time we help ourselves to more than what we need as far as meal sizes are concerned – because tomorrow we will most definitely choose differently. Or so we entertain, most earnestly declare and swear.

But these choices, different to the past if not a radical departure from it, can only happen in the present; in fact, no one has ever not taken a second or third helping tomorrow. Not going back to the kitchen, the stove or fridge for more can only happen, can only be actioned today Is that discouraging? Not at all – it is imminently and immensely empowering and freeing.

It means that tomorrow is the outcome and consequence of how we move in the present.

It means that, if I want to stop overeating, I start today, the next time I get the urge to go to the fridge, the pantry, the shelf. If I want to quit drinking alcohol, I do not have the next drink, rather than filling up today and thinking, if not deluding myself, that miraculously it will be different tomorrow.

Because – how can it be different tomorrow when we have just laid a foundation of it being the same as today? Tomorrow can only be the sum total and consequence of today. To change one’s behaviour and habits can only happen in the present by changing our movements now i.e., not grabbing that packet of chips or block of chocolate, not opening that bottle of wine or not getting more grog from the bottle shop.

And thus – is it possible that tomorrow is a fallacy, one of the biggest furphies in this existence called human life?

Is it possible if not demonstrable that tomorrow never comes? Is it possible that there is no tomorrow and that the only way for change to happen is to live what we wish for tomorrow in the present i.e., today?

Filed under

Body image, Diets, Healthy living, Livingness, Losing weight, Time

By Gabriele Conrad, Editor

Working as an editor of Serge Benhayon’s as well as other books and material – when I am not at my ‘day job’ – is a huge and very rewarding part of the amazing way I now live thanks to The Way of The Livingness.
Photography: Clayton Lloyd