Balaji Prasad
By Balaji Prasad
“Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” ~ The Bible (Matthew 6:25 – 34)
If tomorrow comes…
Tomorrow could be a complete break from today. It could go from what feels dark to the brightest of lights. Or… it could go from light to dark.
It is possible that I could be dead and gone by the time anyone reads these lines. That is not overly dramatic. Many others have said this in various ways. “Memento Mori!” asks us to keep in mind that we must die. Although, this Latin reminder doesn’t put a specific date on the rather unpleasant-to-ponder event.
Only in some instances are we actually able to predict things like death and other extraordinary events. In most instances, we cannot make firm predictions and are therefore forced to deal with what happens only after the fact.
Tomorrow may come… but not until tomorrow!
Predictions for non-trivial things are not reliable. Those who opine on the stock market and make recommendations often say this. In fact, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires such seers to state clearly that “past performance is not indicative of future results”. Clearly, anyone who has failed to get rich beyond their wildest dreams by harvesting the stock market will sadly acknowledge the truth of this assertion. Those who have can thumb their noses at the rest of the losers like me.
Unknowable things cannot be known. By definition. Tomorrow contains many unknowable things. There could be a war. There could be assassinations. There could be famine, drought and pestilence, or any number of such things. Or there could be unexpected windfalls too, such as winning the lottery.
The difficulty of making predictions doesn’t stop people from trying to make predictions that can help them plan for and control the future, though, even resorting to strange methods and superstitions to do so. Why?
Wanting… can be very wanting
There are self-centric reasons that drive the desire to know something about certain things that are in the dim blur that is the future. Without this desire to know in order to control, we wouldn’t have astrologers, gypsies, virologists, maybe even doctors.
But there are unforeseen adverse effects of wanting too much. Especially, the wanting of things that will not yield to the intensity of the want.
Here is a real risk in locking in clearer views of what will happen tomorrow rather than be more accepting of inherent uncertainties that cannot be resolved, however hard one tries. The risk is that a mind that goes to strange places that may never exist is a mind that can be very hard to bring back to solid ground.
Which land is your land?
We live in our minds as well as on the land beneath our feet: one foot in the ground and one in Alice’s Wonderland.
In Wonderland, anything can be anything, especially if you can be one of the crazies there who can let your mind go crazy like the characters of Lewis Carroll’s brilliant parody land.
The trouble with having one foot here and another one there is that the real you in the real world will get squished and tortured by the part of you that seeks to do voodoo from Wonderland to control what it thinks is the real world. Poor Alice! Can she do something different?
Let it be!
If only… if only it were possible not to want to know things so much! If only we were to refrain from “seeing” things that cannot be fathomed and predicted, like the most critical and life-changing things of tomorrow, then maybe we would do less voodooing and do more doing in the present.
That would let us deal with the present and with only the very likely parts of tomorrow such as that you will probably rise again in the morning, and that the sun will rise again with you.
Let tomorrow be! There will be time enough to cry then if you really need to. Or you may never need to, at all – it is possible too that you may be smiling instead. Then what a self-inflicted tragedy it would be to shed tears today for something that will never be as bad as you think it will be!
Balaji Prasad is an IIT/IIM graduate, a published author, SAT/ACT Online and in-person Coach, and K-12 Math Tutor at NewCranium. Contact: balaji.prasad@newcranium.com.
