Today is not a rehearsal

A strange line? Indeed. But profound too. How so? Let's explore.

Tell me if this isn't how most of your days start - from the moment the alarm rings, your mind races ahead — to deadlines, goals, and future victories.

Every moment of the day, we are thinking and acting with reference to some future accomplishment, reducing today to just a 'means to an end'. We treat today as a rehearsal for the final act, for that ultimate moment of achievement and glory and liberation, at some point in time in the future.

But let's pause here and think.

Is today, this moment, just a practice session for the "ultimate" play, the "real deal" that will supposedly come only in the future? Is it? Or is this demarcation merely our own mental concoction? Think.

One evening, during a quiet walk after dinner, it struck me with force: this moment would never return. I've spent, it's gone forever! That realization changed me. I began to see each moment as finite, irreplaceable — and possibly my last.

Fact is, you too will discover, as I did, that it is indeed just a mental division and labelling created by us. Fact is, today is no less precious than tomorrow. Today is just as precious as that hallowed, prized tomorrow, rather more precious than tomorrow because we already have it - the tomorrow that we prize and value so much is not guaranteed, for any of us!

That’s why I’ve always resisted phrases like “time pass” or “pastime.” They carry the dangerous assumption that we have an abundance of time to squander. But do we?

No. We have all come with a limited balance of moments (like a bank balance). And every day, each moment, we are spending that balance irreversibly, irretrievably. So shouldn't we be spending it at least as wisely and prudently as we spend money?

I believe I should. That is why my motto is simple: carpe diem. Seize the day. Because this moment — not tomorrow, not someday — is the real deal and my today is not a rehearsal.