DECEMBER 17
The supreme value is not the future but the present.
—OCTAVIO PAZThe 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 help-
ful—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 mo-
ment, 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 preoccupa-
tions and concerns, and we will do much better if we focus
most of our attention on the moments and hours of the day
that is before us.
I will try to contend graciously and productively with this day.