Friday, May 6, 2011

What you do today means a great deal, though it may mean nothing tomorrow.
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9 comments:

  1. Geoff CarterMay 6, 2011 at 6:10 AM

    . . or could turn out to be crucial!

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  2. IlseMay 6, 2011 at 7:11 AM

    Hehe, like dusting?

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  3. K FieldsMay 6, 2011 at 10:19 AM

    Or... it may not be a big deal today, but tomorrow it will have been very important.

    Or something to that effect.. I am not as good at making aphorisms as you are. :-)

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  4. SprigBlossomsMay 6, 2011 at 10:28 AM

    I like this one : ) It tells me to mindfully enjoy what I am doing today, and not to worry if I don't get the desired outcome tomorrow.

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  5. COUNT SNEAKYMay 6, 2011 at 1:05 PM

    Maybe this is the rationale of redundancy that we need more of in our planning. My best.

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  6. PaulMay 6, 2011 at 7:41 PM

    Like being hugely annoyed by one single mosquito that gives you one sleepless night (and you want to annihilate it at all cost!)

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  7. FlameheartMay 7, 2011 at 9:11 AM

    Sometimes it's sad when it's not remembered... Like when humankind refuses to learn from mistakes.

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  8. JudieMay 8, 2011 at 12:34 PM

    I like Ilse's take on this one! I hadn't realized that it had been a while since I rested here for a bit. I think I am caught up now, and I feel so much better!!!!

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  9. JackrabbitMay 8, 2011 at 8:36 PM

    I'd like to take this aphorism more literally, I think, because it's rather subversive...

    The West can be a very result-oriented society, and sometimes we focus so much on the impact for all eternity or whatever that we miss out on the importance on the act of the here and now. Humans have a responsibility (and a lot of fun) to fully experience the present moment, not for what it will do for the future, but what it is at that specific point.

    I guess I'd think of it like this: imagine you're working on a cure for cancer, which takes up nearly all your time. And yet, you make a point to always spend an hour just being with your spouse even when it puts a crimp on your research time. You prioritize the expression of your devotion to your spouse every day, even when you'd like to work late.

    Even when that marriage failed and you two are now strangers to each other, and then when your cancer cure didn't quite work out, that daily act of love still means a great deal for the intentionality of that moment-- for perfect silence of that embrace on the doorstep after a grueling day, or for a dinner over candlelight.

    Likewise, years later, your years of work on a cancer cure might come to no lasting impact, but each day as it was lived had momentous significance.

    From my Christian background, I would also analogize as "doing the work of God's kingdom," not because you want to to get a divine "merit badge" at the Resurrection, but because dwelling in that kind of work is such an overwhelming expression of your love for God and for mankind. In a real sense, it doesn't matter if it has some sort of eternal reward, for its significance and reward are experienced in the moment itself.

    In short, I guess that significance doesn't have to have a temporal dimension to it; furthermore, if significance is not a temporal thing, it also does not have to be an eternal thing, either.

    Um, sorry for writing so much...

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