No Day But Today?

The husband and I were watching RENT last night for the 15th time, and as I was watching, I found myself having a new reaction to the characters. For those of you unfamiliar with RENT, it's a great Rock Musical written by Jonathan Larson and loosely based on Puccini's opera La Boheme. The characters are a group of 20-somethings living the lives of starving artists in New York's Alphabet City in the '90s. They struggle with HIV, drug addiction, homophobia and questions about the importance of art.

Now I admit that for several years now, I have sung along at the top of my lungs the lyrics to the Act 1 song Another Day:

There's only us,

There's only this.
Forget regret
Or life is yours to miss.
No other road,
No other way.
No day but today.

But as I was watching last night, I started to really think about that notion. Live for the moment at the expense of tomorrow. Don't think about the ramifications or the consequences. There's only one path, and one way. And maybe it's just me getting stodgy in my old age, but it seems that that attitude: No day but today can cause one to - oh, I don't know - end up with HIV or as a heroin addict!

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for making the most of the time you are given, seizing opportunity and making every day count. But if you are living each day as if it were your last, that opens the door for a ton of irresponsible and self-centered behavior.

I guess this brings me to my biggest gripe about my generation: we are so wrapped up in ourselves - our misery, our identity crises, our angst about life - that we neglect to look at the bigger picture. Where is the focus on service to society at large? Where is the drive to make a contribution to the world, or someone other than ourselves? It seems to me that if we focused less on our own misery, and more on the world outside our doors, then might realize that - hey! My life is not nearly as bad as that kid's. A broader view can help us focus less on the minor imperfections of our lives and more on fixing the major ones outside ourselves. We are small pieces to a much larger puzzle, and finding a place in the world at large can help us to define ourselves.

What does that look like? How the heck should I know?! I do it through my work - teaching (an often thankless, exhausting and never-ending job) and through my family. I figure by trying to raise (and shape) kids as service minded, independent, polite children, I can add more soldiers in that battle to heal the world.

So the next time Another Day comes on, you better believe I will be belting it out. But it will be tempered with the understanding that there is a day besides today. And though it's not guaranteed, that's no excuse not to plan for it.