The Tyranny of Tomorrow

It was William Shakespeare's Macbeth, who may have been the first literary figure to offer a cogent argument on the virtues of planning your work and then working your plan when he offered, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day..."

In addition to its eloquence, it's memorable for both its utility and applicability-though in this era (or error?) of diminished expectations and shortened attention spans it's disheartening to realize how quickly we can seem to get lost as individuals and as political units from the municipal to national government level.

We were much more flexible and forgiving when we were younger. I know, “OK, Boomer,” but we were in so many aspects of our lives. And now? Look at us, ossified and petrified and clinging to our beliefs, behaviors, and habits often despite all evidence to the contrary.

We’ve forgotten there's always been more than one way to get from here to tomorrow. The more successful paths involve inspiration and perspiration in nearly equal amounts, that is, a brilliant insight or an original idea combined with hard work. Not forgetting some good luck.

My father was fond of citing the Pennsylvania Dutch as the source of one of his favorite expressions "the harder I work, the luckier I get" but I defer to wherever your mom or dad say they heard it, too. Luck, like hope, is a four-letter word and both have that in common with a plan. But critical to any plan is having definite, precise, and clearly defined goals with a strategy of how to use the tools at your disposal to achieve those goals.

Without all of that, a plan is just a wish you make with your heart. And while that worked out well for Jiminy Cricket, we're having a critical shortage of wishing stars right now, to so I guess we’ll have to make do the old-fashioned way. Personally, I think the top hat and spats played a larger role than previously believed.

There's been enough words written on "how get this city/state/nation back on track" where we each insert the name of the place where we live, step two paces back and admire our handiwork, seldom realizing a good beginning is only that, a beginning.

Articulating a plan means making sure that everyone who needs to be in agreement with it, and that usually means everyone where you live understands what you're sharing, the reasons for what you're proposing, the impact of the sacrifices they will need to make for a common good and then to get on board with the program and own the plan for themselves. All or nothing at all.

Top down, bottom up, there's no one path because there's no one destination-only a journey that has a beginning of each day and never ends. The only constant in our world has always been change and the need for change.

There's never an end to progress-only pauses along the way and no matter what happened yesterday, tomorrow will be here in a moment and cares not a whit about those successes and failures.

We can learn from them, and we can build on them, but we can't live forever on their memory or their meaning. As Banquo admonishes, "if you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak."

Far too often, all that remains is silence.
-bill kenny