Accepting joy tomorrow does no good if tomorrow never comes

By David McElroy · June 21, 2016

When I was a child, the days, weeks and months took forever to pass.

A day seemed to drag on. A week or a month seemed forever. The time from one Christmas to the next might as well have been a lifetime.

And then I got old enough to start thinking about my future self — the adult self who would conquer the world, make a fortune and be loved. I longingly looked forward to that day. I made childish plans. I had fantasy stories in which I was the beloved hero.

When I grew up, I would do all the things I yearned to do — and I would be happy in that distant tomorrow. The picture was crystal clear in my young mind.

Decades later, tomorrow has never come.

I’ve known people who live in the past, but I’ve known others who live in a perfect future that never comes. They think if some particular thing can happen, it will allow something else good to happen — and then they’ll be happy. Until then, everything is on hold.

I knew a very talented woman who was going to be a famous writer. She had the talent. She had the ideas. She was going to write wonderful books. Some day. But she’s done nothing with her talent. She has never gotten the satisfaction and happiness she wanted.

Tomorrow has never come for her.

I knew a man who was going to be happy when he moved to some faraway land. Maybe it was California. Or it could be Minnesota. Maybe Mexico. Or Australia. The specifics don’t matter. He pored over pictures and maps and dreamed about how happy his life would be once he got there. But he never moved anywhere. He never lived the happy life he dreamed of.

Tomorrow has never come for him.

Although the specifics of what I want have changed over the years, many things have always been clear. I wanted a wife and children to love. I wanted to use my talents to make things I was proud of. I wanted people to love my work enough to make me financially successful. I would be happy. I would have all of that — tomorrow, of course, not today.

But somehow, tomorrow has never come. In fact, tomorrow seems to keep moving forward as I do — and I constantly find new excuses why I can’t have the love or happiness that I want today. I keep sabotaging my life in ways that make it clear that a part of me doesn’t want to get there.

About seven years ago, I sabotaged a loving relationship that was about to lead to marriage. Around the same time, I sabotaged my career to the point that I lost success right as I was starting to make a lot of money.

When I made a short film 10 years ago, it was more successful than I had dreamed possible. It was in 20 film festivals and won a handful of awards, including favorite audience comedy at a couple of festivals. It’s been seen more than 300,000 times on YouTube. But I got scared and refused to do the things necessary to make more films or move on to bigger films. I told myself I would make more films when I had a creative and business partner, but I haven’t even allowed myself to seriously pursue that.

After the romantic breakup seven years ago and the sabotage to my career and film goals, I got depressed and started eating again. I put on more weight than I’m willing to admit — because I was using sugar the way an alcoholic uses booze. I was trying to meet my emotional needs by eating my way through ice cream cartons.

With every problem I’ve created for myself, I’ve said things will be different when that problem is taken care of. Always tomorrow.

When I find someone to partner with me in producing films, I’ll make movies and be happy.

When I find a way to sell my art to someone, I’ll have money again. Then I’ll be happy.

When I get rid of the excess weight I’ve gained, then I’ll be attractive to a young woman who might fall in love with me and want to marry me and have a family together. Then I’ll be loved. And then I’ll be happy.

But I sit here mired in the muck of today instead. My eyes are on the bright, clear future in which I’m happy. It’s a future in which I’m my normal weight again. I’m driving a reliable car I’m happy with again. I have plenty of money in that future. People love my art and they’re willing to pay me to do the work that makes me fulfilled. Most of all, there’s a woman who loves me — who loves me for what I am and allows me to love her as she is.

But fear somehow keeps me from doing the things I need to do. It’s fear of not being good enough. It’s fear of failure. It’s fear of success. It’s fear of not being loved. It’s a fear that says, “If you get rid of that weight and if you let yourself be successful — and if nobody still loves you — you’ll have to admit you’re unlovable.”

And so I’m scared to shed excess weight and be attractive.

I’m scared to make my art.

I’m scared to allow myself to be successful.

I’m scared to make the deep connections I yearn for.

I’m scared to be loved.

I’m scared to be happy.

I know how to be happy tomorrow. I know how to be successful and fulfilled and loved tomorrow. I can see all that clearly in the future.

I somehow have to accept all of that today, not just in a tomorrow that never comes.

Share on Social Networks

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

Related Posts