Have you ever wonder why ‘today’ is called ‘present’? Or I think, people refer to ‘now’ as ‘present’ too. I wondered about that and the answer that I like is about a poem “yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called a present”. Do you like that quote?
I believe that today and even our life is a gift. I have seen people that don’t have limbs, people that died young, and people that have internal sickness, such as cancer, diabetic,kidney failure, etc. I don’t have power to make any of those sickness away. I can prevent it by trying to eat healthy, take medicines and/vitamins, but when it happens, it happens. You and I don’t have power to do anything.
So, if our life is a gift, what are we doing with our life? If we can wrap today, what kind of ‘present’ are we preparing for the future you and me? I like the advertisement of an insurance company in Singapore “how will the future you thank you?” I’m not promoting the insurance, but the idea on what to think about the future.
Whatever we do today, it will affect our tomorrow. The quotes that I said says that tomorrow is mystery, but I think if we recklessly living our life, our future will be predictable. Do you want to make your future to be a mystery? These are 3 steps that we can do today to prepare our tomorrow
1. Keep improving yourself
It is true that even me, when I think about improving myself, I will always think about my career or the things related with my job. There is another area that I learned (and still learning) which is our personal being. Are you improving your personal being? Just like we don’t have control on time, we don’t have control on how other people react to us or what kind of message we will receive. What we can do is to make sure we be prepare as much as we can.
Just like facing an exam, we don’t know what kind of questions will be in the exam, but we can study and prepare it so that when we face the problem, we’ll know how to respond. So, let us prepare our life today, so that we won’t have regret of tomorrow.
2. Be grateful of what we have today
If you try to chase the Jones, we won’t be satisfied with our life. I’m sure that you will think how much other people are more fortunate than us. We wish to have what they have, and little that we realize that it becomes bitterness in our heart.
Do you know the saying “the grass is greener on the other side”? Do you know why? This is what I think, it is greener because we are busy looking on the other side and not doing anything on our side. So be greatful of what we have. It might not be the same like others, but we still have something.
3. Make today count
Think it this way, we will always have 24 hours in a day. We sleep about 6-7 hours a day. I don’t have statistic for the sleeping time for people around the globe, but according to an article, average American is sleeping near to 9 hours a day. How about us? Keep in mind, if you read the research, you’ll see that the people only record the time they get in to the bedroom, and get up in the morning. People didn’t count the ‘non-sleeping activities’ before actually sleeping. so, that’s about 1/3 of our time is used for sleeping. Commute? on average I think about 2-3 hours (round trip from and to home), and other things which will be different between each of us. Try to think what you usually do in a typical day? I know there will be some days that you might be less productive, but what’s the average? Only you can answer it for yourself
I’m sure we have a lot of commitments at work, at home, wih our friends, etc. When you spend time in one thing, you can’t spend the same time in another. Choose your time wisely. It might be promising or exciting to do your work rather than spending time with your friends and family. But at the end, you lost everything. Make today counts by doing the important things today. Just like money, we need to invest time wisely. The only different, we can’t get more time. we can only use it.
How about you? how do you spend your day? Make your life count, because you are unique. Don’t waste a lot of your time for something that is not important. I can’t answer for you what is important. I hope you know what is important in your life. I want you to remember this. Even when you think what you are doing will not affect someone else, in reality, it will affect someone else. So, prepare your life so that you or somebody else can enjoy it when they open (by remembering) the ‘Present’
What do you do with your ‘present’? Share with us how should we prepare our present.
”Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present.” – Alice Morse Earle
