Philosopher's Corner

Today... Tomorrow... Eternity...

by Kelly R Piercy

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
- Marcus Aurelius

Hibble: Circumstances have taught me that a man's ethics are the only possessions he will take beyond the grave.
- from the movie Moll Flanders (1996), based on the novel Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe





The frustration of the registry is more about tomorrow than it is today. For most that tomorrow is only more todays, only a life to be endured rather than to be lived.

Some of us are fortunate enough to have a family endure with us. A family we agonize over every day as we watch them suffer for our status. Some of us endure alone and face a future alone. Some of us are the family and friends who agonize over the undue suffering our registrant must face every day and look forward to facing for every tomorrow.

...tomorrow, I love you tomorrow, you're always a day away.. ...tomorrow, I know you tomorrow, you're just another day of pain...

Which song will we make our own?

There is something to be learned in what Marcus Aurelius tells us. Tomorrow will bring more of today, no less. There is a world full of people who live and love with reason and compassion. Each time we are alone and reach out to others in our circumstance we are relieved of some of our burden. That is the sword and shield we battle with today. Will it be enough tomorrow?

Those who would make us the embodiment of evil batter our single shield and make it seem insignificant. We can make it more, we can make it an irresistible wall. Recall the Phalanx and understand its power. It was not one Greek Hoplite, the Phalanx was a formation of interlocking shields that took the onslaught of the enemy and in unison and unity struck back.

The sheer mass of the unified phalanx drove the superior force from the field at Marathon and across entire empires.

Alexander did not just conquer. As he marched his hoplites across western Asia he brought a new way of living under a new culture to the vanquished and created allies. We can strengthen ourselves in the same way and have today's weapons to face tomorrows tribulations. We can reach out to each other and we must reach out to those we have hidden from. We know our cause is just and we can bring that justice to our neighbors and associates one conversation at a time. Those are our weapons of reason.

Tomorrow, one tomorrow in the future will be where we must stand with all our possessions, our pain, our failures, our successes, our joy will no longer have any meaning.

There is an equality among religions. That equality is judgment in one guise or another. We can face today and tomorrow with the reason that is our shield today, but that shield will not stand in the face of judgment. There the only evidence admissible will be our ethics.

We must arm ourselves with reason today and trust it to be our armor tomorrow. In the end, we must trust that we wielded those arms with ethics.

What does that mean...

"...and the second of these is as great. Treat your fellow man as you would have him treat you."
Jesus