Learn, Live, Hope

How many of you were caught up in the “live, laugh, love” craze? Come on, raise your hands, don’t be shy. As with most popular trends I was a bit behind the curve on this one. It’s good advice for sure, simple and direct, and it has that alliteration thing going on. I just didn't get the memo from Kaptain Obvious on that one.

And then there’s the classic from my days in University:  “Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” That was Mark Twain. You may have heard of him – he wrote about this kid named Tom Sawyer, and his buddy Huckleberry Finn.

Or the classic lines from Lee Ann Womack’s ballad “I Hope You Dance”:  “Living might mean taking chances, but they’re worth taking; lovin’ might be a mistake, but it’s worth making”…. We’ve all heard it; most of us have probably belted it out in the car on more than one occasion.

Well, here’s a new one for you:  “Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow.” My good buddy Albert Einstein coined that one. He went on to say, “The important thing is to not stop questioning.” As today draws to a close, and we finish celebrating “Always Live Better Than Yesterday Day,” it would behoove us to take a moment and really ponder what Al was trying to tell us. (By the way – behoove, fun word to say!)

Learn from yesterday. So you made a mistake; you hurt someone, you broke a promise, you forgot to do something important or did something stupid. Maybe you hit bottom. Learn from it and move on. If you drag that stuff into today, you may end up repeating them tomorrow.

Live for today. It’s all we have. We aren’t even promised we’ll have all of it. Take Brad Paisley’s advice and enjoy those little moments. “Well I’ll never forget the first time that I heard/That pretty mouth say that dirty word/And I can’t even remember now/What she backed my truck into/But she covered her mouth, and her face turned red/And she just looked so darn cute/That I couldn’t even act like I was mad/Yah I live for little moments like that”

Hope for tomorrow. I would add to that, pray for tomorrow. Hope is the emotional state which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. To hope for tomorrow is more than just wanting to have one; it’s about believing it will be better than today.

And finally, never stop questioning. A wise man can learn more from a stupid question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.