Walking the Wall

Finish every
day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders
and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a
spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is
good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste
a moment on yesterdays.
        ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I
found this to be fitting and good piece of advice for me. For all my
penchant for quotations, and all my collecting of tidbits, I hadn’t
heard this one before. I agree with the notion of letting go of
blunders and absurdities from yesterday–today really is too dear to be
cluttered with yesterday’s problems. We often hold onto things entirely
too long, things we have done or not done, things done to us or not
done to us, countless worries and insecurities that we give the power
to gain strength and longevity beyond their rightful place. Although,
certainly there is also a danger in “forget[ing] them as soon as you
can,” a danger that in forgetting them, we will repeat them once too
often. So my only suggestion for modifying Emerson’s advice, is to
suggest that instead of simply forgetting them or treating them as if
they never existed, that we should acknowledge them, set them aside,
and then begin the new day well, serenely, and in high spirits.