tomorrow is a bonus

There’s a new challenge, a new problem, a new obstacle coming at us every day, whether big or small. And as we get busy in the daily grind and distracted by the noises and voices around us, it’s easy to get distanced away from gratitude and appreciation for what we have right now. The most important thing that you can appreciate today is that you’re still breathing, you still have the life force within you, you’re still alive!

This appreciation will help you feel better no matter what’s going on in your life. 

There’s an exercise by Seneca with regard to this idea. He wrote, “When a man has said, ‘I have lived!’, then every morning he arises is a bonus.” Seneca said that when a person closes each day as if it was the end of their life, and who contemplates on their mortality during night time, feels an incredible sense of power and purpose within them when they wake up the next morning. 

We are all familiar with the wonderful positive feelings we experience when we realize we still have some extra time with us whether we’re rushing to an appointment, or submitting a report or an assignment. The same goes with knowing that we still have some more money in a particular category in our budget. We feel better and lighter, and a sense of relief. We become more aware and present and practice deliberation and consciousness in our actions. All the trivial anxieties within us disappear, and we start accepting the ephemeralness of things around us and our most important resources. And then, it all becomes about giving our best, and let the chips fall where they may.

So today, give your best and live a full day, and as you go to bed, appreciate your efforts knowing that you may not get the opportunity of waking up tomorrow. And if you do open your eyes tomorrow, which I sincerely pray for you that it happens, you’ll start seeing the rest of the seconds, minutes and hours that you get to live as a bonus.

Tomorrow is a bonus, it will always be. Because we never truly know when the last one would be.