From That Moment On…
Girl Singer, Rosemary Clooney once sang:
“From this moment on, you for me, dear, only two for
tea, dear… from this happy day, no more blue songs, only hoop-dee-doo songs...”
She was expressing the historically long running sentiment that
not only can things change on a dime but that we’ll know it when it happens.
Confucius, or Lao Tzu, or possibly Mao Tse Tung said that, “A
journey of a thousand miles must begin with one step,” which seems to also
imply that the one step in question will be the next one and you will know it
when you take it.
I overheard my father once pass on to a golfing buddy that old
adage, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” which also sounds
very Chinese but is generally attributed to Synanon founder Charles Dederich. I
thought it sort of strange because my father was a strong believer in routine
and not a proponent of the sweeping changes in one’s life that this saying
might imply.
But whether it is a popular song lyric, an old Chinese saying
or an alcoholic’s recovery program slogan I have strong doubts that anyone can
ever precisely and with accuracy predict that a single event will be the
event that changes everything. We’re just not that good at fortune telling and
we’re not nearly as objective as we’d like to think.
Oh we’d like to be able to say if I do this or that, or move to
here or there, or acquire some or choose none that the decision will be a
significant one—a life changing one but to quote another song lyric, it ain’t
necessarily so.
