What If “One Day” Starts TODAY?
The future starts today, not tomorrow.
—POPE JOHN PAUL II
REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULDN’T WAIT TO BE SIX YEARS old? Six is the age every four- or five-year-old dreams of reaching. Six was the age I thought I’d become a big girl. Toothless and excited, I waited for my sixth birthday like it was Christmas. I don’t know now exactly what made six so important. I do know that soon after turning six, I was waiting for the day I would turn ten, then sixteen. Restless still, I put my sights on eighteen, then blew past it headed to twenty-one, twenty-five . . . and thirty. Whatever I was expecting from each of these magical markers kept eluding me, leaving me a bit undersatisfied and therefore rushing ahead to the next marker in hopes of one day reaching my happily-ever-after life—the “one day” that would magically transform my life never came.
“One day”—when life is better—is a lie that can take half a lifetime to see. “One day” brings us nothing if we don’t learn what “today” has to teach us. I refer to one-day thinking as chasing the future at the expense of today. It’s a ruthless, irrational no-win game, because it mows past the present moment looking for something better, as though the present moment doesn’t count.
The present gets treated like that great girlfriend or boyfriend who is overlooked in the pursuit of greener pastures. The tragedy is that the more we focus on “one day,” the less we see today. And, of course, today is the only road we can take to “one day.”
My client Joseph, a brilliant systems engineer in the computer world, had his “one day” all planned out. His problem was that he kept jumping over today in his rush to “one day.” He told himself that one day he would be the boss of his world; one day he would have enough money to never be affected by another person’s whims; one day he would meet the woman he could fall in love with; one day he would be happy.
Joseph thought he was prepared for his one day when he would have career success. Everyone saw him as super smart. He was a disciplined thinker, he was competitive, and he had graduated from a good school. These attributes advanced his career. He became a department head and leader of thirty-two people.
There was just one problem. Joseph was not prepared to be a leader of people. He had dreamed of one day being acknowledged for technological breakthroughs, not for being the leader of people. Actually, he didn’t like people. “People are basically unreliable, incompetent assholes,” he told me during our first session. (I had been recommended to him after a leadership assessment revealed that Joseph’s people skills needed support.)
It didn’t take long for us to get to stories of Joseph’s parents leaving him to prepare his own meals and to walk two miles alone to school at age six. Joseph told me that when he was seven, his father promised to pick him up from school, but after that morning’s promise, Joseph never saw his father again. He waited at school for two hours before he made the two-mile walk back home. Then, he and his mother and sister waited for days for that difficult, brooding man to return. But he never did.
Long before he said it, I knew Joseph had not emotionally acknowledged the loss of his father. His tightly set jaw and stories that painted him as easily irritated and inflexible were my indicators.
When I asked Joseph questions about his father, his responses were cool and dispassionate. He refused to think that his father affected him or his success. Without the slightest hint of caring, Joseph said, “He doesn’t mean anything to me. He doesn’t factor into the equation.”
These statements would later be revealed as lies. Not the kind of lie we tell when we are trying to persuade someone of something we know is not true, but the kind of lie we tell to ourselves when what is true is too much to bear.
These lies get packaged as rage, isolation, drug addiction, and other destructive behaviors. This was the kind of lie that Joseph told when he said about his father, “He doesn’t mean anything to me.” Joseph couldn’t see that his focus on “one day when he was successful” had helped him to ignore the pain and disappointment he felt today. He didn’t realize that the emotions he overlooked today would affect his success “one day.”
Our hurts, dramas, traumas, upsets, disappointments, and fears don’t politely dissolve and make room for our “one day” to arrive. They travel with us. When we accomplish the “one day” we’ve worked to create, our unaddressed feelings are right there, waiting. Usually, their presence confuses us and causes anger and resentment. It’s easy to become resentful when we think that “one day” we will have enough—power, money, time, friends, love, sex—and then discover that these things don’t change how we feel inside.
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When it comes to life, rushing to one day when life is better is like stepping over the basics of arithmetic and algebra headed for calculus. Joseph stepped over a number of opportunities to address smoldering feelings. He neglected to take advantage of the information his “todays” and “yesterdays” were giving him.
There was a time when a new girlfriend promised to do something with him and then canceled at the last minute. Joseph was so angry he punched and shattered the bathroom mirror. There was also the time he blew up at a New York taxi driver for choosing the couple standing next to him. He didn’t recognize that his uncommonly harsh reactions were indicators of an old wound that was asking to be acknowledged so it could heal.
Had Joseph stopped to question his “today,” explore his feelings, acknowledge both his dreams and his disappointments, his unresolved feelings would have revealed themselves. They would have guided him through the hurt he was running from.
Pain goes away only when we acknowledge it. The truth is that we must learn to sit down with the past instead of run from it, speak the unspoken to our Self, and breathe. As we breathe and learn to take an objective (observer’s chair) look at the past, we discover assumptions we’ve made about our Self, conclusions we’ve drawn against our Self, and subtle ways we consistently reject our Self. We can then open our lives to new, more rewarding possibilities. As Joseph began to take care of his Self by looking within, he saw the lies—misconceptions—he harbored about both his Self and his father.
Through developing an inner fitness mindset and practice, Joseph gained a more objective and compassionate view of himself. He realized that he had interpreted his father’s dramatic exit from his life to mean that he, Joseph, was repulsive and unworthy. This unconscious idea of his Self left Joseph feeling isolated and angry. He developed the protective reflex of rejecting people first before they could reject him like he perceived his father had done.
By engaging in internal practices that helped him to center and redefine himself and calm his explosive reactions, Joseph was able to revisit moments and feelings he had rushed past. He began to remember subtleties about life with his father: the way his father spent hours in the garage alone, and how, when Joseph would ask him the kinds of questions a bright, budding computer mind might ask, his father often dropped his head, unable to answer. Joseph’s heart softened as he saw for the first time his father’s low Self-esteem. Joseph began to suspect that his father’s choice to leave him and the family was not a statement about who he, Joseph, was but a statement about his father’s feelings of personal inadequacy.
Because Joseph was no longer running from the past or closed off from it, he could see the past more clearly. Acknowledging our feelings makes room for new realizations. As Joseph looked back on his life with a desire to understand versus judge, he was surprised to discover that he and his father were not that different. Neither knew how to express his feelings. Both chose to distance themselves from people as their way of managing life. At one point, Joseph looked at me with a softness that had been waiting in the wings of his life and said, “I think my father did the best he could. He didn’t know any better. I don’t think he knew he mattered.”
Big events happen to all of us. They matter. Avoiding big events by rushing past them to one day when life is better is a plan for disaster. Avoiding dangers such as hot stoves, cliff edges, and toxic people is smart. Avoiding issues that are present in our lives, such as traumatic events and recurring fear and anger, or avoiding issues related to how we see our Self is not a sound strategy. Every time we avoid our feelings today, we set ourselves up for inevitable sadness “one day.”
To get to “one day,” we must invest in today.
Today is where the choices live that create tomorrow. Today may come with challenges, but those challenges also house opportunities. Inner fitness practices such as viewing our lives from our director’s chair, acknowledging our feelings, interrupting our habitual way of thinking about the past, and daring to contemplate new possibilities will reveal hidden opportunities. These thriving Self choices prepare us for the good that is headed in our direction. When we rush past today, we squander any chance for a truly fulfilling one day when life is better.
The truth is, there is no moment or “one day” when life stops being life. To meet life, we must be present today, take that inward glance which connects us to the truth, and acknowledge what we feel so we can one day stand in front of our dream come true and be able to embrace it.
Inner Fitness Practice
The Big Lie
One day, when life gets better, you’ll be happy.
The Truth
When you unconsciously hold on to hurt, it shows up in other areas of your life. You can’t reach your full potential until you give your unresolved feelings the loving attention they require in order to heal.
The Possibility
Learning to acknowledge and be with difficult feelings, and forge the strength and ability to meet and navigate life no matter what comes.
Try This
Today allows us to acquire the tools and gain the perspective needed to build our most fulfilling and fully alive life.