Happy New Year: Improve the present moment
“One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.”
In other words, carpe diem. Seize the Day.
Emerson moves this sentiment from prose to poetry in his poem, “Heri, Cras,Hodie” [“Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today”]:
Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen,
Today slinks poorly off unmarked between:
Future or Past no richer secret folds,
O friendless Present, than thy bosom holds.
Likewise, John Wesley comments on the importance of embracing the present:
“He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment.”
#holiday #Christmas #vocabulary #RalphWaldoEmerson #Emerson #JohnWesley
