HUG Corner: Thought of the Week 1/31/17
January 31, 2017
“The supreme value is not the future but the present.”
–Octavio Paz
The present is bad enough when we are hit with fresh grief. But we compound our sorrow by spinning our minds out over all the years and occasions of the future when we will so sorely miss the presence of our loved one.
A certain amount of this is not only inevitable, but helpful—a kind of rehearsal for what lies ahead, and a way of getting used to our loss by thinking of all its ramifications.
But after a while we need to remind ourselves that life is lived one day at a time, and that this day, this present moment, is all we have, all we can be sure of. Sir William Osler speaks of living our lives in “day-tight compartments”—as a ship’s captain, with the touch of a button, shuts off parts of that ship into watertight compartments.
It is we who control the buttons of our own preoccupations and concerns, and we will do much better if we focus most of our attention on the moments and hours of the day that are before us.
I will try to contend graciously and productively with this day.