"There's Always Tomorrow"

There's a word that appears more often than any other in the vocabulary of the unlived life.

It's not "can't." It's not "won't." It's not even "fear."

It's "tomorrow."

I'll start the diet tomorrow. I'll have that conversation tomorrow. I'll begin writing, exercising, creating, reaching out, changing—tomorrow. Always tomorrow. The eternal deferral, the endless postponement, the lie so comfortable we don't even recognize it as a lie.

But here's what we never calculate: how many tomorrows have we already spent? How many remain?

And what happens when tomorrow finally refuses to come?

The lie of "tomorrow" is built on a hidden premise: that there will always be another one.

Think about how you treat time. You spend it freely on things that don't matter—scrolling, clicking, watching, waiting. You sacrifice hours to activities that leave you emptier than they found you. You kill time, as if time were the enemy rather than the most precious thing you have.

You would never treat money this way. If someone offered to pay you for an hour of your life—literally purchase sixty minutes that you could never get back—you'd demand to know how much. You'd calculate. You'd negotiate. You'd recognize the transaction.

But time? Time you give away for nothing. Time you let others take without asking. Time you waste on purpose, as if the supply were infinite.

Seneca marveled at this two thousand years ago: we guard our property jealously but let our lives be invaded without protest. We would never let someone steal our wallet, but we happily surrender hours to anyone who asks—to obligations we resent, to entertainment that numbs us, to busyness that signifies nothing.

The only explanation is the infinite tomorrow. We spend freely because we believe the account can never empty. We defer endlessly because we assume there will always be time to begin.

There won't be.

Let's do the math that no one wants to do.

The average human lifespan in developed countries is about 80 years. That's 4,160 weeks. That's 29,200 days. That's the total supply—assuming nothing goes wrong, assuming you're lucky, assuming you make it to average.

Now subtract.

If you're 30, you've already used 1,560 weeks. You have roughly 2,600 left.

If you're 40, you've used 2,080 weeks. You have roughly 2,080 remaining. You've hit the halfway point.

If you're 50, you've used 2,600 weeks. The balance tips toward depletion.

Now consider: how many of those remaining weeks will be truly available? Subtract the hours for sleep—that's a third of your life, gone to unconsciousness. Subtract work—that's another third, or more, spent in service of survival. Subtract illness, exhaustion, obligation.

What remains? A fraction of a fraction. A sliver of fully available time, scattered across decades, impossible to predict or control.

And yet: "there's always tomorrow."

The retirement fantasy. The someday dream. The plan to finally live once the conditions are right—once the mortgage is paid, once the kids are grown, once the career is established, once, once, once.

Seneca calls it foolish forgetfulness. I call it something stronger: it's a bet against yourself. A wager that you'll still be healthy, still be capable, still be alive when "someday" finally arrives.

It's a bet most people lose.

In The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantès is imprisoned in the Château d'If for a crime he didn't commit. He's nineteen years old when the door closes behind him. He will be thirty-three when he finally escapes.

Fourteen years. In darkness. In stone. Counting the days that slide past like water through fingers.

At first, Dantès doesn't count. He assumes, like all of us, that this is temporary. That rescue is coming. That tomorrow will be different. He waits. He hopes. He trusts in a future that refuses to arrive.

Then the counting begins. Scratches on the wall. Marks for each day. The terrible arithmetic of time confined.

"Wait and hope"—but Dantès learns that waiting is not passive. The difference between him and the other prisoners, the ones who rot and die forgotten, is what he does with the time. He meets Abbé Faria. He learns languages, sciences, history. He transforms his cell into a university. He makes waiting into becoming.

The prisoner who counts his days learns something the free person forgets: time is finite. Each day spent is a day removed from the total. The scratches on the wall don't lie.

You are also scratching days off a wall. You just don't see the marks.

The lie of tomorrow doesn't just steal future time—it steals present time.

When you defer something important to tomorrow, you don't simply postpone it. You change your relationship to today. Today becomes a waiting room rather than a living room. Today becomes the time before the real thing starts, rather than the real thing itself.

I'll be happy tomorrow, when I achieve the goal. I'll be present tomorrow, when the stress is over. I'll be myself tomorrow, when conditions allow.

And so today is sacrificed. Not just wasted—negated. Transformed into mere preparation for a future that may never come.

Expectancy. The constant looking forward. The refusal to inhabit the present because the present isn't the plan.

Seneca points out the cruel irony: tomorrow is uncertain, beyond your control, dependent on Fortune's whim. Today is here, available, entirely within your power. And yet we trade the certain for the uncertain, the present for the promised, the real for the imagined.

This is what "tomorrow" steals: not just future days, but the only day you actually have.

There's a practice I learned that changed my relationship with tomorrow.

Every morning, before anything else, I ask: If this were my last day, would I spend it the way I'm about to?

Not every day passes the test. Sometimes obligations are unavoidable. Sometimes the work that needs doing isn't the work you'd choose. But the question creates awareness. It forces a calculation that "tomorrow" normally lets you skip.

Because if the answer is "no" too many days in a row, something has gone wrong. If you consistently wouldn't choose the life you're living, you're not living—you're just postponing death while waiting for life to start.

Marcus didn't take mornings for granted. An emperor with the power of life and death over millions still woke and reminded himself: this is a privilege. Being alive, breathing, thinking—these are not guarantees. They are gifts, renewed each day, revocable without warning.

The morning question punctures the illusion of infinite tomorrows. It forces you to treat today as what it is: the only day you're certain to have.

How do you stop believing in the infinite tomorrow?

Not through willpower. The lie is too deep, too comfortable, too woven into how we structure life. You can't simply decide to stop believing it.

But you can make tomorrow visible.

Calculate your remaining weeks. Write the number down. Put it somewhere you'll see it daily. Watch it decrease. Let the arithmetic do what willpower cannot.

Make deferral explicit. When you catch yourself thinking "tomorrow," pause. Ask: if not tomorrow, when? If not ever, admit it. The things you'll "definitely do someday" but never schedule are the things you're choosing not to do. Name that choice.

Practice one thing today. Not everything. One thing. The conversation you've been avoiding. The project you've been deferring. The change you've been promising yourself. Do one piece of it now, today, before the sun sets.

Thoreau went to the woods to escape the trap of infinite tomorrows. He understood that civilization was structured to make you postpone your life, to keep you busy with the inessential while the essential waited for a someday that would never arrive.

You don't have to go to the woods. But you do have to confront the same question: when will you start living? What tomorrow are you waiting for that justifies not living today?

There is no such tomorrow. There never was.

There is only today, endlessly renewed until the day it isn't.

Tomorrow will come—probably. And when it does, it will instantly become today. The only day you can ever act in is today. Tomorrow is always one day away, forever unreachable, a horizon that recedes as you approach.

This is not pessimism. This is liberation. Once you stop believing in the infinite tomorrow, you're free to use the finite today.

But "tomorrow" is only the first of the lies. In the next chapter, we'll examine its close cousin—the belief that you're not ready, that you need more preparation, more information, more time before you can begin.

You don't.

You never did.