The future is the past we can still do something about.
From The Anticipation of Loss, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The man who rents the corner house spent all afternoon putting in a hedge of little sticks, no higher than Switch standing up, and he kept stepping back to look at them. I could not see what there was to look at. Then it came to me that he was not looking at the sticks, he was looking at a hedge in about nine years, the one that will shade the north side of the house and hide the trash cans. For most of my life I thought of the past as the finished thing and the future as the empty one, and I had it backwards; the future is the past we can still do something about. He watered the sticks. I keep thinking about the nine years, which are already out there in some fashion, waiting to be told what they contain.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- The early bird gets a moment to itself.
- It's hard to say thank you when thank you means goodbye.
- Many things are given away, but nothing real is ever lost.
- A strawberry uneaten will not long remain a strawberry.
- A life with endless sunshine would be a life without starry nights.
- Everything is new, but few things are seen anew.