If you don’t leave your past in the past,
it will destroy your future.
Live for what today has to offer. Live for what NOW has to offer.
Let the past live in the past, not you.
~ Brahma Kumaris, Thought for Today
E.B. White is the author of such beloved children’s classics as Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. I am not sure why E. B. wrote them, but you certainly can relate to his words:
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
And his comment that is my personal favorite: All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
Researchers (lovereading.co.uk)have collated the figures for the number of editions, translations, and copies sold of the following report of the world’s most popular books:
1. The Koran
2. The King James Bible
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Mao Zedong
4. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
5. Harry Potter series, JK Rowling
6. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
7. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
8. Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9 = And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
9 = Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
9 = The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
9 = Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Many well remember Alice in Wonderland and the rabbit’s frantic, “I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!”
Before it’s too late, let’s take some time to ponder what books would make our own top-ten list.
The main character in the book, Don Quixote, is said to have read enough books romanticizing chivalry that he lost his sanity and actually believed he was a knight. The third most widely read book in the world quotes Mao Zedong, as having said, “To read too many books is harmful.”
You have to agree: books change lives.
The narrator of The Little Prince, learned when he was a child that adults lack imagination and understanding.
Imagination and understanding….
Some of us have been changed in ways we do not even recognize by books we have not yet read, and some of us have already been profoundly changed by something we did read in a book.
In an April 30, 2018, article titled, “How to Live in Day-tight Compartments and Why You Should,” Franz Wiesbauer, MD, writes about that having happened to William Osler:
It was a beautiful spring day in 1871 when a young medical student picked up the book that would change his life.
Anxious about taking his final medical exam, this future doctor was (understandably) looking for a distraction. He found that distraction in the words of British philosopher, Thomas Carlyle. As he mindlessly flipped through the pages, he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread about his upcoming exam. Then he read a sentence in the book that caught him dead in his tracks.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
These 21 words were enough to shake William Osler out of his jittery state and decide that he needed to focus on today. On what he could do now rather than focusing on what could happen tomorrow. He realized in that moment, that worrying about his exam was not going to get him any closer to actually passing it. He needed to focus all of his energies on what he could achieve today, that would help him get closer to his final goal of becoming a doctor.
Thirty years later, he would address the graduating class of medical students at Yale with a piece of advice that commonly finds its way into the self-development bestsellers of today.
The advice was simple: live in day-tight compartments.
The life-saving meaning of Osler’s message was clear. The sinking of the Titanic was a recent event. Lives would have been saved if that vessel had been designed with compartments that kept the whole ship safe even when part was in peril.
Life is like that. Make sure you don’t turn a rough moment into a rough day or rough period into a rough life by living each moment in day-tight compartments.
The load of tomorrow added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past…To youth, we are told, belongs the future, but the wretched tomorrow that so plagues some of us has no certainty, except through today. Who can tell what a day may bring forth?…The future is today—there is no tomorrow! The day of a man’s salvation is now—the life of the present lived today, lived earnestly, intently, without a forward looking thought, is the only insurance for the future. Let the limit of your horizon be a 24-hour circle…Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. Shut close, then, the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of Day-Tight Compartments.—Sir William Osler
There are many practices which help us. For example, write down the things that you have some sense of worry about.
Ask yourself, what is the worst that can possibly happen? Accept that.
Fear doesn’t always mean danger, even if it feels like fear.
Worry doesn’t mean love. In fact, worry often blocks love the way clouds block the sun.
Claim the truth: you could survive even if the worst happened.
If a worry pops into view, use the Rule of Six and discipline yourself to generate six possible outcomes.
Notice if they are all negative. Come up with possible solutions that are not the worst!
As the saying goes, most people overestimate what they can achieve in a day and underestimate what they can achieve in a lifetime. Let the past live in the past….