By Tony Deyal
This song by the great Elvis Presley constantly made the point, “It’s now of never / My love won’t wait.” However, not everyone sees it that way. One view is that tomorrow never comes, yesterday never was and today never ends.
What makes it worse is that tomorrow is the future but also the present. This means that today is the day which is happening now. Except that one of my friends in Canada was told by his wife, “Forget about the past, you can’t change it. Forget about the future, you can’t predict it. And forget about the present, I didn’t give you one!”
To put it in the recent past, Kamala Harris who wanted to become president of the US, said: “Today is today and yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So, live today so the future today will be as the past today, as it is tomorrow.” No wonder she ran into a man who blows his own Trumpet in the air and caused hers to end drowning in the deep water. The one thing I hope she learned, as I did, is that tomorrow never comes for the speaker. In other words, if you put something off until tomorrow, it never gets said or done because tomorrow is always the next day and not today.
Matthew 6:34 in the bible put it another way: “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” To put it in my own language, “Why is tomorrow infertile? Because tomorrow never comes.”
This is why, starting tomorrow, whatever life throws at me I will duck so it hits one of you out there. This is what happened in history and still continues. The inventor of TV, Dr Lee DeForest was adamant: “Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.” The man who managed the US Atomic Bomb Project was sure that man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances. Even my Aunty Moon knew better than that. But she believed Robert Willikan who couldn’t when he told everybody, “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. Popular Mechanics, which I have been reading for years but not in 1949 when it claimed that computers in the future may weight no more than 1.5 tons.”
It was like my uncle Jacket’s cows in the cane field carrying heavy loads to the factory. Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM, two years before I was born, was adamant that the world market would only need at most five computers, and a memo in the Western Union the money transfer leader, was certain that: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” The same with the “wireless music box” which the American Businessman, David Sarnoff, made it clear, that “it has no imaginable commercial value” and asked, “Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”
Just to make sure that it was not only the money area, the big star of the time, Gary Cooper, laughed loudly and said, “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” The movie was “Gone With The Wind!” Lord Kelvin, the British Mathematician, was certain, “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” Fortunately, he was wrong otherwise Frank Sinatra could not have made it big with, “Fly Me To The Moon.” And fortunately for Trinidad, the American businessman, Edwin L. Drake, did not listen to workers he asked to work to drill for oil in 1859 and was told by them, “Drill for oil? You mean drilling into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”
Obviously, they were not as smart as the people who say the sign, “JOP OPPORTUNITY: Riot police officers needed. Interviews are being held tomorrow. Come early to beat the crowd!” On the other hand, when one of those who got the job decided to give someone a ticket, the person said, “Officer, you can’t do that? I have to run the marathon tomorrow!” The policeman replied: “That’s now how you play the race card!” This was still better that the married couple, Harry and Esther, who were out shopping when Esther reminded her husband, “Darling, it’s my mother’s birthday tomorrow. What shall we buy for her? She said she would like something electric?”
Harry replied: “How about a chair?” It is like when I had just got into Secondary School and told my teacher that I would be late for school the next day. He so did not trust me because sometimes, with a few of my classmates, we went to the 10 o’clock cinema and shared a couple cigarettes, he asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?” I told him, “Sir, I am getting glasses for the first time.” He then asked me, “And after that?” I replied, “I will see!” It was my friend who I asked, “What is your wife’s favourite day to make love?” He replied, “Tomorrow.”
This is what happens when we look ahead! For instance, Russia has announced early results from the election which isn’t until tomorrow, but they already announced that Putin has won. It is like my children in the car when we went for a trip. Every few minutes they asked, “Daddy, are we there yet?” This is the kind of thing that the future drops on you. A teacher trying to get the older kids in his class asked them, “What do you want to do in the future?” One boy, let’s call him Peter, replied, “I want to be a pilot.”
Another, Tommy, was certain that he wanted to be a doctor. When it was Margaret’s turn, she smiled happily, “I want to be a good mother.” The fourth kid, Frank, was clear, “Sir, I want to help Margaret.” I like this attempt at the future very much. Even though I am 79, I can see six years into the future. Instead of a 20-20 vision, I have 20-30. One of my buddies told me that taking money out of my saving account is stealing from my future self.
My reply was: “Well it’s luck for me that my future self won’t be able to afford a lawyer to press charges in the court against me.” The one that got to me was a fortune teller. I asked her to see what was in my future and she told me that any day I die would be a Trinidad holiday. That sounded like I had done well for my country, but to be certain I asked her why she was so convinced. She answered: “Any day you die Tony, the politicians in power, regardless of whether Indians or Africans, will make sure it is a Trinidad holiday.”
*Tony Deyal was last seen remembering the man who went to a fortuneteller to see his future. She told him, “Oh, I see that on Friday, your wife will die.” He replied, “I already know that. What I need to know is whether I will be arrested.”
