Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow

By Klaus Döring

Do you always count the days until the next legal holiday without being on duty? Or do you start as early as September longing for Christmas? And do you wish the weeks or months would pass quickly until the next possible salary increase?

Many times, we are really in too much of a hurry while feeling uncomfortable when we notice how time flies. We have no time for someone or something, or even for ourselves.

The quote, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning,” was said by Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was a German physicist and Nobel Prize winner who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists in history.

One reason we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business, when all that legitimately concerns us is today. If we really have too much to do, there are some items on the agenda that God did not put there. Let us submit the list to Him and ask Him to indicate which items we must delete. There is always time to do the will of God. If we are too busy to do that, we are too busy. I love the thoughts of author Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015).

When I was still a teenager, I longed for the time when I would already be a grown-up. Later, I enjoyed listening to my grandmother’s stories such as “Once Upon a Time” or “When I Was Young” from her “yesterday’s life.”

After a couple of years, especially while observing that time really flies like a rocket to the moon, I always have the same question in my mind: Are the present hours and days less valuable?

Learning from yesterday means correcting the mistakes you made yesterday and doing it again. Living for today means not making those mistakes today. Hoping for tomorrow means that if you learn from the past, your future will be bright.

Is life in the future easier, nicer, more charming and more fulfilling compared to the present? Many of us retreat into the past and forget our present existence. A possible topsy-turvy world of golden youth tries to let us forget that the past also had its share of disappointments, pains, tears, darkness and desperate days. Dreamy and sleepy days, yes, lost days, irretrievable time …

I am glad and happy to be able to live a wonderful life as an expatriate here in the Philippines since 1999, together with my family and some very good friends. It was not easy during the first years. Now, we stand on our own feet because we worked hard and adjusted very well.

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Email: doringklaus@gmail.com, follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn, or visit www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or www.klausdoringsclassicalmusic.blogspot.com.