"I ain't got nothing but today and a whole lot of tomorrows"

The above quote is from a text I just got done reading for my Contemporary American Literature class.  It is from the book Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas which is an amazingly entertaining and gripping Autobiography of Mr. Thomas' life in Spanish Harlem.  This novel is amazing as is the author who just passed away last November.  Warning: If you are offended by harsh language and graphic details, this book is not the book for you.  Having said that, the language took getting used to and some of the graphic details were shocking to get through.

This book is about identity.  It's about one man's journey to declaring and accepting his identity, not for identification, but for self-creation.  There are so many quotes from this book that are truly beautiful.  The title of this blog is one of those quotes, another goes along well with it.  Piri Thomas was incarcerated for shooting a cop at a night club that he and his partners were robbing.  He was in prison for 6 years and when he was released and on parole, his parole officer warned him to cut all acquaintance with his old contacts.  Curiosity gets the better of Piri and he hits up his old friends.  One of them is a man addicted to Heroine and tweaks up in front of Piri, who is sober from the habit himself.  This old friend offers him a chance to shoot up and Piri declines.  Piri walks away from his friend and as he walked away, the thought occurred to him, "Everything happened yesterday... I was a kid yesterday and my whole world was yesterday.  I ain't got nothing but today and a whole lot of tomorrows."

Piri grew up fast, joining gangs when he was 12 and starting drugs at 14 and robbing his first business as a 14-15 year old.  He left home when he was 17 and lived the next near-decade of his life in anger and hate.  As a 20 year old he became a career criminal and made his living off of pushing drugs to buyers.  He became hooked on the substance he pushed and it was all downhill from there.  He survived withdrawals and became sober only to move in to the work of armed-robbery to make his living.  It was at this point, after some successful robberies that he shot a cop and was incarcerated.

His time in prison was filled with education, both scholarly, and self-evaluative.  It was in prison that he claimed his identity and his life turned around.  When he was released, he turned his life to God and to service.  It was hard to get to where he got because he he constantly doubted himself and if he was capable of moving forward.  That's the point of this blog post.

We all have yesterdays.  Some of our yesterdays are really hard to let go of.  Yesterdays are what-ifs in disguise.  Yesterday is "yesterday"... meaning, a day since past.  Not everything from our yesterday can be so easily discarded and let go of, and perhaps not everything should be "moved on from"; that is left to your discretion.  The point is, all we have is "today and a whole lot of tomorrows", so let's not waste them on the yesterdays we can let go and the what-ifs that "are nots".  Another quote I love, "If it's important, you'll find a way.  If it's not, you'll find an excuse."  Let go of the excuses and find the way for the importants.  "Todays" and "Tomorrows" are blessed things because within them both lays opportunity of our making.  So make it happen.