Secrets

Good mornings are not possible when you wake up late and still have three hours of homework undone from the day before.

I know because, well, I had a not so good morning today. I don't know that I would generally classify myself as a "morning person," but overall I usually feel more or less congenial and optimistic as I wake up and drag myself out of bed, though I rarely would rather get out than stay in--am I the only person who truly LOVES sleep? It's so pleasant. I love soft pillows and warm blankets and resting muscles and a peaceful mind and dreams--even scary ones--they're just so interesting. And I love to analyze my dreams and diagnose myself through psychoanalytic speculation. Sleep! My dearest and most illusive friend!

But despite my desire to stay in bed, I regularly get up anyway and feel more than just ok about it. Proof that I am neither depressed nor suffering from mono, if nothing else! On days like today, however, I am forced to pull myself up from bed with a terrible sinking feeling, wondering if perhaps it would not be best to remain beneath the sheets and wait for another 24 hours to eclipse this unwelcome day; hoping with the next breaking of morning all the dreaded details of today will have disappeared with the magical passing of time. And yet, even in my half-awakened state at 7am, which should have been 6am, I know that it doesn't work that way. I know that if I stay in bed and miss today I will just have new reasons not to get up tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. And it occurs to me that it's true what they say: We have to live in today. I'm sorry to break the hearts of "Annie" lovers, but we can't love tomorrow without first living today. It is, in fact, the very reality that I did not live quite properly yesterday that made my awaking today so very unpleasant. Had I prepared more fully and gotten all the things accomplished which I should have, I would have woken up today to the figurative chirping of birds and the sun shining through my window to beckon me softly into the new day--and it is not tomorrow that would call, but today itself. We have no hopeful tomorrows, we only have potential todays and our todays determine our tomorrows, which in turn become todays full of opportunity and choice and it is up to us to live today and thus to prepare for the next and the next after that.

So I ask you now and always, tempt me not with tomorrows! They will do me no good!

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient is the day unto the evil thereof." 3 Nephi 13:34