Living For Tomorrow

So, three days of internet deprivation might not be pleasant, but it is useful. Still nice to be back, though.

Upcoming posts include Life in C, some rambling on rehearsals, and probably some more of my now-epically-overdue summer posts. (I am developing a bad habit of making promises that I might not keep, here ^^)

For now, have some Strange Product Of Epic Boredom.

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On hearing that I've never been drunk, someone told me that I need to live life more.

To this, I riposted that I did: it was simply that my way of living life doesn't involve getting drunk.

He said that no, that wasn't what he meant. He meant anyone could get run down by a bus tomorrow, so we need to live in today. He said that this is the only time in our lives when we can do what we like without responsibility.

I didn't agree, but I didn't argue. It did make me think, though.

Do I really live for today? For the most part, I don't. I live for tomorrow, for my future plans and my castles in the air. I rarely make a decision without thinking about its consequences, its repercussions, the pathways it will open for tomorrow.

But should I live for today, really? Because if I live for what I have now, I don't have that much to live for. My friends, I have, but in this moment I can't easily spend time with most of them. My family? They're odd and a little bit askew, and they don't need me enough for me to devote my life to them. The world? I can't even get there. I don't have the independence to enjoy today; my principles and ideas and philosophies stick me to the life I have, and the way I live walls me in.

For the most part, I live for my ambitions. I make a friend today so I will have them tomorrow; I act today so I can act better tomorrow; I read a book today so I will have finished it tomorrow. Is that wrong? Or am I just more optimistic than I thought I was?

It is the way that I live for the future that makes me disagree with the third part of his statement. I don't believe that I'm too young to have to take responsibility for my actions. Today, impulsive decisions might not be problematic, but tomorrow, or someday, they will always have consequences. So living for tomorrow regulates what I do today.

In a way, maybe this is just a philosophy of procrastinating happiness. It seems my philosophy is to get through today and live for tomorrow so that, when tomorrow comes, I will live for today. Tomorrow, I will be independent and free, and I will have the power to make every moment good enough to live for each as it comes.

I will keep living for tomorrow (like Elizabeth Grayson does in Anne of Windy Poplars, I suppose) because that way, when tomorrow comes - and it will, someday, in five or six years perhaps, but someday for a certainty - it will be awesome.