The Salutation of the Dawn

Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision,
but today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.

attributed to Kalidasa ca. 400-500 A.D.

I was maybe 13 when I read this poem for the first time. I didn’t completely understand it but it spoke to me, deeply enough that I wrote it down and learned it by heart.

The poem speaks to me today in the same way it must have spoken to people 1500 years ago. It speaks about something I have been trying to do and I am still trying to learn, living today and living well today. I still spend way too much time thinking about what I could have done differently and maybe better in the past and way too much about what the future may hold. This poem tells me again what I know but most times don’t follow. It tells me, that by living well today I create a past I will like to look back on and lay the ground for a future I will enjoy to live in. But all this happens today, now, and it comes from what I actually do now and not from what I plan to do some day or what I wish I had done in the past.

I created this blog for several reasons. One is, that I want to clarify my own thoughts and by shaping them and writing them down they become much clearer to myself. Another is, that others may be struggling with the same things I am. I can’t offer solutions but maybe you can learn something from my struggle and this may help you to see things clearer and maybe bring you closer to a solution for yourself. Solutions are quite individual I expect but the struggle and many thoughts are similar for everyone.

The things I plan to write about are varied, some may be about living in the moment as described in the poem above, others may be about sustainable living, meditation, creativity, gratitude, learning, physical and mental health, life as it is and as it should be, shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings and whatever else I feel like writing about. I hope you will enjoy it!

Monika