"Tomorrow is another day." I hear this phrase a lot; maybe more so these days of terror and violence and displaced peoples and economic turmoil and confusion within relationships.

The premise behind it is hope. It is always hope. We say these words to someone going through a rough patch, experiencing a sad moment, gripped by despair, imprisoned by solitude or depression. Any amount of reasons needing reprieve from the moment.

We say them to ourselves as well. For all of the above and even for the simpler ones: an opportunity missed, a forgotten call to someone, a stupid thing we did that day, our neglect of a tedious job.

I wrote a couple of reviews, one after the other I think from memory and both writers were speaking about tomorrow. This premise of hope; a fresh beginning, an end to some dis-ease...

It struck me as I was writing the second review; something about our focus always been ahead. The promises contained within each new tomorrow, the possibilities abounding, the prospects lurking, looming just beyond the next sunrise.

I recall too, quoting in my review that other much-used phrase, "Today is yesterday's tomorrow". Something like that.

I moved on to reading the most incredible first chapter by a new writer to the site. It was so fine I lost myself within it, believing I was turning the pages of a best-seller- and I don't mean pulp-fiction.

Still, the 'tomorrow is another day' or as we Aussies say, "she'll be right, mate," lingered. I found myself asking why it was always presented with hope. Only hope. Why was it offered up as consolation for the current day's mishaps or tragedies or tediousness?

Why do we never consider each tomorrow as a step closer to death? Every tomorrow as yet another day nearer; holding within it endless possibilities for not only our eventual, but also our unexpected, early demise. The getting hit by a bus thing...

My mother always nagged me, as I tended towards procrastination especially when it came to humdrum things, or unpleasant, tiresome things needing attention. Translated, this nagging said: "If something can be done today, don't leave it for tomorrow."

Oh how I grew to detest this phrase over the years! "Yeah, yeah," was my usual response, meaning, "Leave me alone I'm busy with something more important right now."

As a procrastinator still, I am in turmoil. The "Yeah,yeah," suddenly has another side, an unpleasant side. If I am filling up every tomorrow with each todays' tediousness and this goes on and on... day after day - see where I'm heading? The assumption that there is always a tomorrow, always another one, offering hope, offering reprieve and yes, perhaps offering up the state of mind receptive to tackling the boring stuff amassing, put off and put off...

But this every tomorrow full of these posibilities suddenly also presented as another step closer to my death - or any amount of incidents leading to an earlier than anticipated demise. Tomorrow is not good then? A moment when I sat back and removed the hope - looking at a tomorrow without this hope attached - It scared me.

Am I leading now into how we should rejoice in the present and live in the present and not put off things due in the present? I don't think so. Only because this is unsustainable. Dreams would not exist in the present. Wishes would not exist in the present. Relationships would not exist in the present. Hope too... All these and many others project and also regress, back and forth on our timeline.

Maybe a more balanced view of tomorrow is needed. Hope sure, but accompanying it, a little fear. A "what if..." added to the mix of expectation, anticipation and procrastination.

We can count our life-days with a fair amount of certainty - hell we can go online and use a plethora of tools which once we factor in our health, our diet, our lifestyle and our present age they spit out in turn how much time we have left; based on the averages of our responses compared with past results and projected outcomes. 

I did that once. Felt rather good because as a vegan, I had a life-expectancy of 98. Of course I didn't factor in the getting rear-ended by two cars a couple of years later, resulting in excruciating nerve pain most days since. Can I live to 98 carrying this pain and depending on increasingly ineffective 'pain management'? It seems an awfully long time to be wasted lying on my side in tears.

I also watched a new Belgian film a few days ago. It was sub-titled. The story revolved around 'God' living here on earth and being an evil trickster. His young daughter decided to do something to stop this evil and texted everyone in the world the precise amount of time they had left to live. Scattered scenes showed different times on people's phones, some only having a second or two of life left, some an hour, some a few years.

People panicked as was expected, and a few tried to change their fate by doing something other than the usual, at the exact predicted moment of their death. It didn't work; they avoided the initial intended 'something' but another unrelated thing caused their demise anyway.

What would life be, if we each knew the exact moment of our death and could watch the seconds, minutes and hours counting down? Would this result in a frantic mess of doing, doing, doing, trying to cram in everything we could in the time we had left?

Would anarchy prevail, everyone seeking to fulfil every dream and agenda and bucket-list item; caring little about anyone else? This temporary, varied-in-length immortality, allowing each to do what they'd never dared, to take the risks they'd always feared, to say the words they'd always held back... for another day - because there was always another tomorrow before this event?

It has made me pause, sure. The writing, coinciding with the film, my own procrastination, my mother's nagging; all interwoven to produce a shifting in thinking, an introduction or perhaps acknowledgement that each tomorrow offers hope certainly, but also takes another day away. Another day away...