This is something I wrote back in 2003. ~ Marsha

---

I cut my finger the other day. One second I was slicing a tomato and the next I was racing for something to soak up the blood. While I didn’t need stitches, the rest of my day was shot. I was going to finish up an article, but I couldn’t type with a wad of cotton and five bandages wrapped around my pinkie. I didn’t attend dance class because I was afraid that all the bouncing around would make my finger start bleeding again. The evenings entertainment, a romantic dinner with my boyfriend, turned into a first aid session as he got rid of the cotton wad and reduced my bandage count down to two.On the drive home from my boyfriend’s house I thought about all the things I had planned for the day and how my plans just hadn’t worked out. And isn’t life filled with days like that? One day you’re at the office and you get a call you’re your child’s been hurt on the playground. One second you’re driving and then a car comes at you out of nowhere. Or in a more extreme case, one day you’re working in a tall office building in New York and look out the window to see a plane where a plane should never be.

Given the temporary and fragile nature of life what are we doing making plans anyway? None of us is guaranteed even one more day on the planet, but there we go making plans, to-do lists and setting goals. Then I realized that this simple thing, planning what a person is going to do each day, is really an act of faith.

We have hope that there will be a tomorrow and so we plan for it. We trust that our loved ones will be alive and well and so arrange family vacations. Five-year plans and ten-year plans are really a way of laughing in the face of uncertainty.

When I got home that night I took out my to-do list and moved my unfinished items to later in the week. I moved them to days when I hoped my finger would feel better. I moved them to days that I trusted would be better.

I have faith in tomorrow and I can prove it. Just look at my to-do list.