“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow”—Albert Einstein

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow”—Albert Einstein The only time period in which any of us can ever live is the present. The past is behind us, and the future always lies ahead. However, at least the near past and the near future are always going to be on our minds to some extent. We should never become obsessed with either the past or the future, but we cannot afford to totally ignore them either. There are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned from the past, and we can substantially improve the quality of our lives today by cultivating a positive attitude toward the future. Education should be an ongoing process that continues until the day we die, and life’s experiences are a basic source of that education. No matter how painful our experiences, we can and should learn from them. I believe that we should try to bury most of the details of terrible memories from the past so that we don’t relive them over and over, but we don’t want to bury the lessons we learned along with the other details. With the publication in 1952 of the book, “The Power of Positive Thinking,” Dr. Norman Vincent Peale introduced millions of readers to the idea of trying to improve their lives by engaging in positive thinking. I believe Dr. Peale’s book helped a lot of people, including myself, but it was very controversial and received a lot of criticism from mental health professionals. In truth, positive thinking may not be any more rational than negative thinking, but I believe those who practice positive thinking have a lot more fun traveling life’s journey than those who are always bogged down with a negative attitude. We must make sure that we don’t try to substitute hope for effort as we seek a better future. English philosopher Francis Bacon warned that, “Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.” And Benjamin Franklin said, “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.” To the extent that positive thinking and hope motivate us to work hard toward a brighter future, they can be very potent, but blind hope that things are going to be better regardless of what we do is not likely to have much impact on what actually happens in the future. If we want to have a happy and productive life, we must do everything in our power to bring about such a life, and the only time we can do anything to affect our future is during the present. However, as we live in the present we can reflect on the lessons learned from the past and focus to some extent on what we can do in the present to bring about a better future. Copyright 2015 Allen W. Smith