This very powerful word was heard mostly when I was growing up as in ‘maybe tomorrow.’ This meant that whatever I wanted would happen in a distant blurry future, rather than right now which is what I had in mind. It bore a close relationship to that other ever popular phrase from the parental mouth, “We’ll see.” These were all-purpose answers to ‘Can I go to Susie’s?’ or ‘Can I have shoes like Mary’s?’ or ‘Can I have ice cream for dessert?’
But one thing about the tomorrows of my youth, which I did not realize at the time, was that they were unlimited. There would always be a tomorrow in which all sorts of things would and could happen. I could go to college, I could fall in love, I could write the Great American Novel, I could decorate my own home in pink and orange, or I could have a llama for a pet. The tomorrows stretched out before me.
Yet there was also another side to those tomorrows. I grew up in a time of the fear of the atomic bomb. We had drills at school, which in first grade meant that at the sound of the fire bell we all crept beneath our desks and covered our heads. Then in high school we advanced to standing in the hallways with our faces to our lockers as the warning bell clanged on and on. We read Neville Shute’s On the Beach about a world devastated by an atomic bomb, and we watched neighbors build underground shelters in their yards. This fear was in our tomorrows as well as our longed-for escape from parental oversight into that glorious future in which we ruled our own world.
Now, in the shadow of eighty, I find that the concept of tomorrow has a very different tinge. If you have not yet gotten to Susie’s or acquired those shoes, it is probably not going to happen. You may have fallen in love and then out of it. The llama could have turned out to be a disastrous pet, and hopefully, the pink and orange house never materialized. Tomorrow is not a never-ending path, but one you know has a definite end.
But that is not as bleak as it sounds. One can live however many tomorrows are left to the best of one’s ability. And one thing is definitely lifted from our older tomorrows. If the oceans rise, if the ozone layer disappears, if the national debt rises to ten gazillion dollars it is not really our problem. Deep in our consciousness we know that we will not be there to witness the results of these problems.
This raises an interesting question. Should those who do not reap the whirlwind be in charge of deciding how we handle these problems? Should, in fact, governing be left to those to whom the future belongs, not to those of us who have had our future for better or worse? What would a 35 year-old-president, the minimum age according to the constitution, do with the job? The founding fathers believed that with age came wisdom and maturity, but an unrecognized fact is that with it also comes a diminishing investment in the future. Just a thought for those of us who have more years behind than in front of us.