LIVE EACH DAY as if it were your last.!

“Live each day as if it were your last;

         -And some day you will be right.”

        

         Each time I encounter this very famous and often repeated quotation, I tend to react defensively. The words were originally recorded by an extremely talented and adventurous Australian-born pioneer, Harry “Breaker” Morant, who during his lifetime was an enigmatic and enterprising Australian bushman, author and journalist.  He was also a volunteer in the British army that was sent to subdue the Dutch Settlers in South Africa in the Second Boer War. His life came to an early and abrupt end when he was executed in 1902, by a firing squad made up of his own colleagues, for “war crimes” he was accused of committing during that war. He was 36 years old!

Like myself, most people’s initial response to the quotation is with positive acquiescence but not full acceptance. Clearly since no one really knows when the fateful time will arrive, one must prepare  as if it will occur at any time, but at the same time continuing their daily living nevertheless. There are some people however, especially those with ultra-conservative Christian principles, who prefer to choose the literal interpretation, quoting the Holy Bible, especially Matthew Chapter 24, Verse 36, as their guide: 

 “But concerning that day and hour, no one knows.

Not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son; But the Father”

They cease upon this and, in the context of living by God’s wishes and of securing a place in the eternal hereafter, spend their lives focusing on their ultimate life in eternity, while ignoring their life in the present. In effect these people spend their lives chasing the hoped-for illusion of a life in the hereafter, and ignore the genuine rewards of fulfillment and contentment that can be achieved by living in the present.

Perhaps the most extreme example of such interpretations was seen in the famous case of the “Heaven’s Gate Extinction” which occurred in 1997 in San Diego, California. A group of 39 very intelligent and successful men, urged on by Marshall Applewhite, an eccentric son of a Presbyterian minister, and an equally eccentric Bonnie Nettles, gave up everything they owned on earth and participated in a mass suicide. They believed that this was God’s wish and that he had sent a special extraterrestrial spacecraft, which was supposed to be following the projected Hale-Bopp Comet, to collect their souls and transport them to a better place. 

My personal dissatisfaction of the Morant quotation is not with its accuracy, since clearly no one knows when his day will come, but with its incompleteness. I prefer to relate to the more effective and more substantive view expressed by so many people throughout the ages including Mahatma Gandhi, one of the world’s finest statesmen, father of free Republic of India and founder of the non-violent movement that swept the world, when he advised:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

Learn as if you were to live forever”

Or the equally impressive quotation contained in the Hadith, one of Islam’s Holy Books, and attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which advises the followers to:

       “Live for your afterlife as if you will die tomorrow, 

        and live for this life as if you will live forever.”

In both these instances, the overriding theme is that irrespective of what happens, we can only live our life in the present. The real meaning of living can only be experienced in the present moment, and however we tried, we can only live life from moment to moment. The past is gone and will not return, and the future is still a dream, and has not yet arrived. Whatever we undertake, we must do so with the clear knowledge there is no guarantee of any results extending beyond this moment. The rest is but a dream; until it arrives!

         Living for today should not imply that tomorrow is forgotten, nor should it be ignored. However, although tomorrow should be anticipated, it must not be allowed to influence this moment, nor affect living life in the present. 

Living for today means that each day must be spent to maximum effort, to achieve the most we can, and above all, to avoid the inclination to put off for tomorrow because of convenience or expedience. Not only because tomorrow may never come, but also, when tomorrow comes, the circumstances would have changed and so will be the opportunities available. 

It also means that while it is futile to hold on to the past, or worry about the future, it would be equally naïve not to believe that we must live every day like it was the last day.

        

To live each day as if it were the last day demands always giving your fullest and best effort, without being burdened with the fears and the anxieties of wondering if you made the right choices. This will also allow you to be free of the worry and regret of possible mistakes, or concerned about what tomorrow will bring. All of this will inevitably produce such enriching and rewarding results that  give rise to feelings of true fulfillment. For to be able take action unencumbered by fear of the future, and to have the confidence to take chances, and to have faith in yourself about tackling and completing tasks, without being afraid of ultimate failure, will go a long way to ensure true personal satisfaction.  Perhaps, Lord Buddha might well have been alluding to this benefit when he offered the following advice his followers:

“Do not dwell in the past and do not dream of the future.

Concentrate your mind on the present moment only.”

But living for today alone without taking into account that a tomorrow could appear and will need to be lived in, is both short sighted and unrealistic. But in doing so however, it is important that you do not fall into the trap that each tomorrow is but a continuation of today. The world that we live in and the lives of each one of us who inhabit it, are all in constant change in ways that are unpredictable. Nothing ever remains constant, and survival, to be truly effective, must always recognize and accommodate this fact. Man, quite unlike any of the vast array of living beings that inhabit the earth, is blessed with the unique ability to learn from his mistakes if he chooses to do so. Most of the time however, he fails to do so, and as a result continues to commit the same errors and suffer the recurring consequences of failure and disappointments.

 Gandhi in his quotation drew attention to this anomaly when he advised:

“Learn as if you were to live forever.”

It is not enough to recognize that life must be lived in the present alone, but that for as long as our life continues, we must continue to learn from the mistakes, always changing to satisfy the demands of the present. It is only by knowing the errors of the past can we avoid mistakes in the future. And it is only by the act of learning, by identifying the faults and the mistakes we make, can we begin to understand how to correct them or avoid them. Even more important, is the fact that only from the experience acquired from dealing with our setbacks can future changes be anticipated and then corrected. It is precisely for this reason that learning must continue for as long as life itself lasts; and if life ever continues forever, so too must be our learning.

Sadly very few of us ever take this to heart. We instead prefer to react to the demands of today by trying to escape to the safety of tomorrow and in so doing, lose all the benefits of today. Bernard Berenson, the highly respected Lithuanian-born, American art historian lamented publicly this unfortunate state of affairs when he noted:

“I wish I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.”    

Far too often we spend all our energy and effort wasting our lives trying to hold on to our yesterdays or to escape to our tomorrows because of some poorly founded beliefs that our lives will improve. We ignore or avoid the lessons that are staring at us, and end up angry and disappointed with our life and ourselves. We never see the solutions that are glaring before our eyes and continue to repeat the same mistakes. Stephen Vincent Benet, the Pulitzer Prize winning American poet and author, beautifully described the final outcome in the following manner:

“Life is not lost by dying. Life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.”

We need to realize that death itself is not life’s greatest enemy, but the way we choose to live our life each day. It depends entirely on if we allow ourselves to fall victim into the sea of fears and anxieties that exists all around us and drown in desperation. Or to choose to live life to the fullest each day, being fully aware that the next day may or may not come. The ultimate choice rests with us; To live each day fully and free of tomorrow, or to live in fear of our yesterdays and our tomorrows, while ignoring the beauty of today. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), undoubtedly one of America’s greatest authors, summarized this option most beautifully when he wrote:

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life.

A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

-We will all do well if we learn to follow the wise words of Mahatma Gandhi and all the great masters throughout the ages, and live each day as if it is our last, never forgetting that if tomorrow comes, we live it equally.

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