You Do Not Have to Live Tomorrow Tonight
By H.R. Zimmerer
The call has been made. The message has been answered, or sent as far as you can send it. There is a next step, but it belongs to another person or another hour. Meanwhile, evening is arriving around the unfinished thing. You can keep returning to it, examine each possible answer and imagine the consequences of the answer after that. None of this necessarily brings the next actual moment any closer.
It can be difficult to leave a concern unattended in your mind. If the matter is important, you may feel that continued worrying is one of the ways you demonstrate your care. You are still thinking about it, therefore you have not forgotten it. The feeling is understandable. But the person you love does not always receive more of your devotion because you have rehearsed their difficulty for another hour. Some kinds of care are better measured by what you do when something can be done.
There may indeed be another practical thing that needs your attention tonight. Then you attend to it. The invitation to rest is not an instruction to ignore a real need. It begins at the point the title describes: when you have done what you can. You have made the arrangement, checked what needed checking or understood that an answer cannot yet be obtained. Repeating the question in every possible form is no longer the same activity as taking the next useful step.
At that point, you can make a place for the unfinished thing without giving it the entire evening. Perhaps there is a note you need for the morning. You can put it where you will find it. There may be a time to call again or a question to ask when an office opens. A concern can remain important while its practical details wait in a form that does not require you to keep carrying every word of them through the house.
If faith is part of your life, you may understand this pause as somewhere to bring the matter in prayer. You can ask for help without claiming to know how help must arrive. You can be honest about what you want and what you fear. Trust need not mean announcing that every outcome will be easy to understand. It may mean allowing yourself to be a person who has acted with care and still cannot command everything that follows.
You may find a quieter version of the same pause without giving it a religious name. The day has reached the limit of what you can do with it. A thought may return even after you have decided to stop pursuing it; that need not become another failure to correct. You can notice that you are back in the imagined conversation and return, as often as necessary, to the actual room. There is an evening here as well as a tomorrow ahead of it.
The room may contain people whose company you would like to enjoy. There may be a meal you have not tasted properly because you have been holding a conversation with the future. Or there may be quiet you could use without immediately filling it. These things are not disloyal to the concern. They are part of the life in which your care exists. You do not have to abandon the present in order to prove that tomorrow matters.
Tomorrow may call for a clear answer, patient work or the courage to say something plainly. You will meet those demands from inside the day itself, with whatever new information it brings. Tonight, you are being asked to act on versions of the day that have not happened. You cannot live each of them in advance, and you need not regard that human limit as a defect in your commitment.
For now, let the next useful thing be enough. The note is where you can find it. You have done what can be done this evening. If you pray, you can leave some of the prayer unanswered. If you sit quietly, you can let the quiet remain without an explanation. There will be another morning in which to begin the part that belongs to it. You do not have to use up this evening trying to get there early.
Prose reflection
When you have done what you can, let your care be different from your worrying. You have made the call, offered the help, put the next thing in motion. Following every possible answer into the dark will not make you more devoted to the people and things you love.
If you pray, you can pray without knowing what comes next. If you sit quietly, you can leave a little unsaid. Tomorrow may need your courage, your judgement, your hands. It does not need you to spend this evening trying to live it in advance. There will be time to meet the day when it arrives.
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