NO PAST, NO FUTURE

 

                NO PAST, NO FUTURE

            Here is a stanza from a poem “A Psalm of Life”. Its author is an American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882}. The full poem is pretty long comprising nine stanzas of four lines each. The first stanza reads like this:

            Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

            Life is but an empty dream!

            For the soul is dead that slumbers,

            And things are not what they seem.  

 

The stanza which I have referred to above is as follows:

            Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!

            Let the dead past bury its dead!

            Act, act in the living present!

            Heart within, and God o’erhead!

 

Of the three divisions of time--- present, past and future, only the present is available to us. It is here and now and is turning into past every fraction of a second. We are using it as we wish. As for the past, it is gone ever and exists only in historical records. The future is totally uncertain. It may or may not come. We cannot be sure about its availability.

 

People who go on remembering the past and keep their minds loaded with its good or bad events, waste even their present time. It is desirable to keep our minds empty of what happened in the past and what may happen in  future. Talking about painful or shameful events of the past, especially to hurt some listeners is hardly appreciable. Hence, the psychologically and morally

sound advice of the poet:

 

            Act, act, in the living present !

            Heart within, and God o’erhead !

                                                *********

G.R.Kanwal

24 June 2024