BORROWED SUNLIGHT.
BORROWED SUNLIGHT.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.
By Kāteb Shunnar.
We are not promised tomorrow, but that don't mean be careless and reckless today, don't mean take every foolish chance and just hope somehow you'll make your way. Tomorrow never signed no contract, never promised it was coming to stay, so while I ain't guaranteed another sunrise, Lord, I'm thankful for today.
I won't complain, even with tears falling down my face. Some days hurt like hell, but even pain got its season and place. I've lost some things I wanted to keep, watched some dreams disappear without a trace, but if I'm still standing here breathing, then apparently God ain't finished with my case.
I've walked through orchards and seen the prettiest flowers bloom, smelled sweetness floating through the air like heaven had sprayed perfume. I've watched branches bend with fruit, heavy with blessings in the afternoon, but even the fullest orchard knows winter eventually enters the room. Leaves will fall. Fruit will rot. Petals will loosen and blow. What once stood dressed in green will someday stand naked in snow. That's the strange little sermon of nature, one we see but don't always know: everything that arrives must change, and everything that blooms must let go.
What's here today might be gone tomorrow, so be careful of your ways and means. Everything shining ain't gold, and everything green ain't what it seems. You can spend your whole life chasing a picture, then wake up trapped inside somebody else's dream, because life ain't measured by what you collected, but by what remained when they emptied the scene.
I know right now your life may look freshly bloomed. You got sunshine in your pocket, and every door looks like it was made for you. But drought don't send invitations, storms don't call before they come through, and the sun don't ask your permission to set just because you ain't finished enjoying the view.
So plant something deeper than money. Grow something greater than fame. Build something death can't repossess and time can't erase your name. Because houses change owners, and trophies eventually collect dust just the same, and one day somebody might sell your favorite chair for twenty dollars and swear they gave somebody a bargain. Ain't that something? You spend forty years protecting your stuff, then somebody put it on a folding table Saturday morning with a little piece of masking tape saying $5.00. Life got jokes.
That's why my life is more than living in the moment. My life is more than possessions I can brag about owning. More than applause, more than being seen, more than looking successful while starving somewhere in between. My life is more than today, yet today is all I possess. So I hold it like sacred water, not too tight, but with tenderness. I don't worship the moment, but I honor the breath in my chest, because gratitude ain't pretending life is perfect, it's knowing you're breathing while walking through the mess.
See, I want to leave something that can't be buried with my bones. Something that survives when my voice ain't answering phones. A little love in somebody's spirit, a little wisdom somebody carries home, a sentence I wrote that finds a lonely soul and whispers, You ain't walking alone.
That's wealth to me. Not how much was sitting in my account, but how much of my spirit I gave. Not how many people knew my name, but whose heart became stronger because I came. Not whether I escaped every storm, but whether I learned how to dance in the rain, and whether after life broke me open, I poured out medicine instead of pain.
Because we are not promised tomorrow. And strangely enough, that's what makes today so sweet. The flower is beautiful because eventually it must leave. The fruit is precious because the branch cannot forever keep. The sunset moves us because daylight knows when to retreat, and life becomes sacred when we finally understand it ain't ours to keep.
So when my evening comes, don't tell me I should've lived more wild. Tell me I loved more deeply. Tell me I kept something of that grandmother-raised child. Tell me I still found wonder in ordinary things, that the world never completely stole my smile, and when everybody else was running toward nowhere, I had enough sense to sit down for a while.
Let me smell the flowers before they're gone. Let me taste the fruit before it falls. Let me say I love you while somebody can still hear me call. Let me forgive before pride builds another wall. Let me live without pretending I own any of this at all.
Because tomorrow ain't mine. Never was. Today is borrowed sunlight, a temporary breath from the Divine, a little patch of eternity dressed up to look like time. So I won't waste it fearing the sunset. I won't spend noon mourning the night. I'll tend my orchard while I have it. I'll love while love is in sight. And when my leaves begin falling, when my season has completed its flight, I pray I can look back without regret and say:
I didn't just exist.
I lived right.
Because we are not promised tomorrow.
But look at God... we got today.
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