Carpe Diem – Can I Do This Today?

On one sunny fall day, I called my best friend. “I saw the forecast. It might be raining next week. Why don’t we go for a walk today? Maybe this will be the last nice day this fall.” She agreed. We walked for hours, talked about ice cream, relationships, global warming, guys, how when you block all the crazy folks on Facebook your feed becomes boring, meaning of life and that jazz. It was one epic long walk.

Next day my best friend called me. “Hey, it’s still sunny. I was thinking maybe we should go for a walk again.” “Sure thing,” I said, “it may be the last sunny day…” And we had another epic walk and another long conversation about…well everything.

The forecast was wrong, it wasn’t raining the next week. So I called my best friend again, proposing another walk. “Hey, the weather is still great,” I said. “I know, let’s go for a walk, who knows how long will it last,” she answered readily. And we enjoyed another long walk, another couple of hours of pleasant, fall sunshine.

[quote cite=’Milena Rangelov’ align=’right’]If you make today your masterpiece, the future will take care of itself.[/quote]As it turned out, the fall that year was exceptionally warm, sunny and dry. (Ass kicking global warming, I guess.) My friend and I enjoyed about fifteen long walks. Hours of deep conversation about anything and everything. Miles and miles all over Belgrade. We watched how the color of the leaves changes gradually. We were grateful for the sunshine, warmth and another opportunity to spend time outside. We savored every single minute of each walk. Always bearing one thought on our minds: “Maybe tomorrow all of this will be gone.”

How cool is that? The sense of urgency helped us activate. The awareness that the nice weather may be transient amplified our joy.

When you feel cranky, a bit lazy and in a procrastination mode, use the strategy of Today. Ask yourself:

CAN I DO THIS TODAY?

Maybe it will be raining tomorrow. Maybe it won’t. If you use this day as good as you can, it won’t even matter.

We all imagine our impeccable, lean, confident and spiritual future-selves. But if I don’t exercise today, my future-self probably won’t be lean. If I don’t write today, my future-self won’t be a hell of a writer.

If you want to quit sugar, drinking, smoking, obsessively checking Facebook, ask yourself: “Can I stop this just for today?” Focus on today. If you go through today without whatever is your drug of choice, tomorrow it will be easier. And you’ll be stronger.

If you want to create anything big, beautiful and meaningful, start today. Do one small, sloppy action that will put you ahead of hundreds of couch potatoes, who think that there will always be enough “tomorrow’s”, while waiting for the next episode of the TV show on Netflix to load in.

Your life consists of a finite number of todays. So do something today. Carpe diem. If you make today your masterpiece, the future will take care of itself. And the sun may continue to shine longer than you expect.