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Someday
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12:33 PM
by Steven Ivory
This was supposed to be The Future. Remember?
By the 21st century, we were going to be living like the Jetsons and dressing as Patti and the rest of LaBelle did in those space-age outfits during their "Lady Marmalade" days.
By now, we were to be vacationing on Venus and Mars. And every door, not just the ones at the local supermarket, would slide open automatically. At least, that's how we romanticized it way back in the 20th Century. After all, at the time the 21st century was still a long way off. It was The Future.
Had anyone asked, I could have told them all about The Future. I lived there, if only in my dreams, for more days than I care to admit.
It was called Someday. You won't find it on the calendar--there's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., but no Someday--but I knew it wasn't a figment of my imagination. I mean, my plans for the future are vivid, and so was Someday.
Its reality was verified for me in a song by the '70s vocal group, the Five Stairsteps, whose sentimental classic, "Ooh Child," portrays Someday for all its euphoric worth: "SOMEDAY, we'll put it together and we'll get it all done/SOMEDAY, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun, SOMEDAAAY..."
In that song, Someday is a place whose promise looms huge, its twinkling potential infinite.
Someday.
Someday is the garage of our cerebral, storage space for our ambitions, large and small. It is the part of you that you've placed in life's Layaway plan, patiently waiting to be claimed. And you will, you say, Someday.
Not to be confused in dynamism, significance or dimension with something as trite as One of These Days, Someday, just this side of the Twilight Zone, is steeped in hope and wonder.
Someday's durability is magnificent; unlike any other conventional measurement of time, it occupies no designated or permanent space in the universe. Yet, Someday is real--as real and as sincere as you can possibly be to yourself and remain as vague as hell.
You should have seen my Someday. It was and remains a glorious, surreal carnival of missions accomplished; a manicured field of dreams fulfilled. Someday, everything in my life was going to be exactly as I'd dreamed: I'd collect the material things I desired. Shore up family ties. I'd finally create the body I wanted. I'd travel. Someday would heal whatever pained me emotionally.
Someday, I was gonna meet the girl of my dreams--someone, of course, who would shamelessly buy into my Someday.
It was damn near perfect, my Someday, and what wasn't perfect, would have been...Someday. See, that's how Someday works--the good stuff in your life is always ahead of you, always something you're GOING to do. Most of what I really wanted in the present somehow got relegated to Someday.
I wish I could report the single ominous moment that revealed to me the bullshit of it all. Actually, it was just a matter of facing the grim and lonely truth that Someday is procrastination on steroids, pretty much a metaphor for Never, a byproduct of fear and self-doubt.
As for The Future, well, it's already here. It arrived long before the 21st century. It's called Right Now. This--today, RIGHT NOW--is all we have. And while tomorrow isn't promised to anyone, you don't wanna be caught with your dreams down around your ankles, just in case. As we live this life, it is what we do Right Now that will shape the days ahead.
In the end, even the Stairsteps, arbiters of Someday, figured this out. By "Ooh Child"'s crescendo, they triumphantly declared, just in time for the fade, that "things are gonna get brighter...RIGHT NOW." It took them exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds to make the transformation. Let's just say it took me a little longer, but still earlier than Someday. By light years.
Steven Ivory's book, FOOL IN LOVE (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster) is in stores now or at Amazon.com Respond to him via STEVRIVORY@AOL.COM or MYfeedback@eurweb.com
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This was supposed to be The Future. Remember?
By the 21st century, we were going to be living like the Jetsons and dressing as Patti and the rest of LaBelle did in those space-age outfits during their "Lady Marmalade" days.
By now, we were to be vacationing on Venus and Mars. And every door, not just the ones at the local supermarket, would slide open automatically. At least, that's how we romanticized it way back in the 20th Century. After all, at the time the 21st century was still a long way off. It was The Future.
Had anyone asked, I could have told them all about The Future. I lived there, if only in my dreams, for more days than I care to admit.
It was called Someday. You won't find it on the calendar--there's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., but no Someday--but I knew it wasn't a figment of my imagination. I mean, my plans for the future are vivid, and so was Someday.
Its reality was verified for me in a song by the '70s vocal group, the Five Stairsteps, whose sentimental classic, "Ooh Child," portrays Someday for all its euphoric worth: "SOMEDAY, we'll put it together and we'll get it all done/SOMEDAY, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun, SOMEDAAAY..."
In that song, Someday is a place whose promise looms huge, its twinkling potential infinite.
Someday.
Someday is the garage of our cerebral, storage space for our ambitions, large and small. It is the part of you that you've placed in life's Layaway plan, patiently waiting to be claimed. And you will, you say, Someday.
Not to be confused in dynamism, significance or dimension with something as trite as One of These Days, Someday, just this side of the Twilight Zone, is steeped in hope and wonder.
Someday's durability is magnificent; unlike any other conventional measurement of time, it occupies no designated or permanent space in the universe. Yet, Someday is real--as real and as sincere as you can possibly be to yourself and remain as vague as hell.
You should have seen my Someday. It was and remains a glorious, surreal carnival of missions accomplished; a manicured field of dreams fulfilled. Someday, everything in my life was going to be exactly as I'd dreamed: I'd collect the material things I desired. Shore up family ties. I'd finally create the body I wanted. I'd travel. Someday would heal whatever pained me emotionally.
Someday, I was gonna meet the girl of my dreams--someone, of course, who would shamelessly buy into my Someday.
It was damn near perfect, my Someday, and what wasn't perfect, would have been...Someday. See, that's how Someday works--the good stuff in your life is always ahead of you, always something you're GOING to do. Most of what I really wanted in the present somehow got relegated to Someday.
I wish I could report the single ominous moment that revealed to me the bullshit of it all. Actually, it was just a matter of facing the grim and lonely truth that Someday is procrastination on steroids, pretty much a metaphor for Never, a byproduct of fear and self-doubt.
As for The Future, well, it's already here. It arrived long before the 21st century. It's called Right Now. This--today, RIGHT NOW--is all we have. And while tomorrow isn't promised to anyone, you don't wanna be caught with your dreams down around your ankles, just in case. As we live this life, it is what we do Right Now that will shape the days ahead.
In the end, even the Stairsteps, arbiters of Someday, figured this out. By "Ooh Child"'s crescendo, they triumphantly declared, just in time for the fade, that "things are gonna get brighter...RIGHT NOW." It took them exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds to make the transformation. Let's just say it took me a little longer, but still earlier than Someday. By light years.
Steven Ivory's book, FOOL IN LOVE (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster) is in stores now or at Amazon.com Respond to him via STEVRIVORY@AOL.COM or MYfeedback@eurweb.com
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