(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them.)
As we leave one year and begin another one, we are reminded of Al Stewart’s 1978 hit song that includes:
Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.
Dr. Crane wrote in his column about the importance of living for today and working for our tomorrows:
YESTERDAY
I am Yesterday. I am gone from you forever.
I am the last of a long procession of days, streaming behind you, away from you, pouring into mist and obscurity, and at least into the ocean of oblivion.
Each of us have our burden, of triumph, of defeat, of laughter, of bitterness; we bear our load from you into forgetfulness; yet as we go we each leave something in your subconsciousness.
We fill your soul’s cellar.
I depart from you, yet am I ever with you.
Once I was called Tomorrow and was virgin pure; then I became your spouse and was named Today; now I am Yesterday and carry upon me the eternal stain of your embrace.
I am one of the leaves of a growing book. There are many pages before me. Someday you shall turn us all over and read us and know what you are.
I am pale, for I have no hope. Only memories.
I am rich, for I have wisdom.
I bore you a child and left him with you. His name is Experience.
You do not like to look at me. I am not pretty. I am majestic, fateful, serious.
You do not love my voice. It does not speak to your desires; it is cool and even and full of prudence.
I am Yesterday; yet I am the same as Today and Forever for I AM YOU; and you cannot escape from yourself.
Sometimes I talk with my companions about you. Some of us carry the scars of your cruelty. Some the wretchedness of your crime. Some the beauty of your goodness. We do not love you. We do not hate you. We judge you.
We have no compassion; only Today has that.
We have no encouragement for you; only Tomorrow has that.
We stand at the front door of the past, welcoming the single file of days that pass through, watching Tomorrows becoming Todays and then enter among us.
Little by little we suck out your life, as vampires. As you grow older we absorb your thought. You turn to us more and more, less and less toward Tomorrow.
Our snows cumber your back and whiten your head. Our icy waters put out your passions. Our exhalations dim your hopes. Our many tombstones crowd into your landscape. Our dead loves, burnt-out enthusiasms, shattered dream-houses, dissolved illusions, move to you, surround you.
Tomorrows come unnoticed. Todays slip by unheeded. More and more you become a creature of Yesterdays.
Ours are banquet halls full of wine-soaked tablecloths, broken vessels, wilted roses.
Ours are empty churches where aspirations were, where only ghosts are.
Ours are ghastly Pompeiian streets, rich galleons a hundred fathoms deep, genealogical lists of sonorous names, mummies in museums, fragmentary pillars of battered temples, inscriptions on bricks of Nineveh, huge stone gates standing amidst the tropical landscape of Yucatan, Etruscan wine jars now dry and empty forever.
From us comes that miasma of inertia that holds humanity in thrall; from us comes the strength of war-makers, monarchs, and all the privileged.
We reach up long, sinewy, gray arms of custom and tradition, to choke Today and impede Tomorrow.
We are the world’s Yesterdays. If you knew enough to put your feet upon us you might rise rapidly. But when you let us ride on your backs we strangle and smother you.
I am Yesterday. Learn to look me in the face, to use me, and not to be afraid of me.
I am not your friend. I am your judge — and your fear.
Tomorrow is your friend.
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