A Guy’s View: The future is perfect

“The chief beauty about time
is that you cannot waste it in advance.
The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you,
as perfect, as unspoiled,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied
a single moment in all your life.
You can turn over a new leaf every hour
if you choose.”
– Arnold Bennett

The year that was 2017 is gone. For some of us it was a good year because of the successes we had during those twelve months. For others, it was the opposite. The good thing for both groups is that 2018 is not circumscribed by the events of 2017. This new year is awaiting what we choose to do with it or make it.

This column usually tries to shed light on issues of national or international significance, but at the head of this Roman calendar year, it seems right to reflect on personal lives, for regardless of what lies outside of us, we have to live with ourselves. In the end, we have control over nothing else but ourselves.

There was a time when I could not imagine that there were people who did not believe that God exists. Of course, in my naivety, I imagined that my concept of God was shared by everyone else. I have since come to understand that there are persons of deep faith who do not share my understanding of the divine.

I have also come to accept that there are persons who are so accomplished that they have no need of a god and, therefore, have no time to waste with such things. They too are a part of our national tapestry and impact on the lives of the rest of us. I find the following extract from Epistle 1 of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man to be worthy of reflection, and maybe, even instructive:

“Then say not man’s imperfect, Heaven in fault;
Say rather man’s as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measured to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day is as completely so,
As who began a thousand years ago.”

Whatever our belief system, we all have a great opportunity to look back, but only with a brief glance, and determine what we will not take with us into the future. Our past errors are now of no moment if we leave them behind. The important thing is what we do with the time ahead of us.

A less scholarly quote than Bennett’s or Pope’s may be useful to put our personal decisions into appropriate context. These words are provided by Carrie Underwood, an American country singer:

“I guess it’s going to have to hurt, I guess I’m going to have to cry, And let go of some things I’ve loved to get to the other side
I guess it’s going to break me down, Like fallin when you try to fly,
Sad but sometimes moving on with the rest of your life starts with goodbye”

Some of us have lost loved ones in 2017. Some through death, some through divorce, and others may have had to walk away from toxic relationships. There may be lingering pain or temporary soreness, but there is no benefit to be gained by taking 2017’s regrets into 2018. This year is a new slate on which you can write a new beginning.

I quoted Alexander Pope earlier. A better known quote from him deals with hope:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

What Pope describes here is the reality that most of us live. In fact, if we are church members, we are constantly told to look to a better future somewhere away from here. And we are urged to hope for an intangible paradise. That approach teaches us always to be longing for what will never be attainable.

Hope may spring eternal in our breast, but we must find contentment in the present. The future will never come: it will always be in the future. The onus is on us to see the future as the scroll on which we will write and record our great deeds of today. If you hear the voice of God today, do not harden your heart.

This new year should be approached with hope, yes, but our hope should neither be wishful nor wistful thinking and a surrender to the unknown. We say that we do not know what the future will bring. The future will bring us nothing. We have the responsibility to make the future what we want. Our hope, therefore, should not be an intangibility, but a confident expectation of what we will accomplish.

It is good to question and reach for truth. The secret things of God, if we believe in God, will remain secret. But who knows whether what we now believe to be secret is only waiting for us to take hold of it and make plain its contents?

Life will be accompanied by challenges. That is without question. But what are gods supposed to do? Is it not to conquer and overcome challenges? And we are gods, if we believe the scriptures, but we shall all die like mere men if we remain ignorant of what we are.

This is an election year. It is the duty of mere men to preach fear and gloom to us, for it is on our fears that they thrive. But what we do with our lives is up to us. If we have a spirit of fear it is not from God. We should rise above our lower instincts and embrace the blessings that have been prepared for us. Our future can be perfect, if we make it so.