Look Well, Therefore, to This DayBy Saint Kalidas

Look to this day,
for it is life,
the very breath of life.
In its brief course lie
all the realities of your existence;
the bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is only a dream,
and tomorrow is but a vision.
But today, well lived,
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
and every tomorrow
a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.



This timeless poem by Saint Kalidas carries a quiet yet powerful truth: life does not happen in the past or the future it happens now.

We spend so much of our inner world travelling between what has already happened and what has not yet arrived. The mind replays old memories, regrets, conversations we wish had gone differently. It also races ahead, worrying, planning, anticipating, fearing. Yet neither yesterday nor tomorrow actually exists outside our thoughts.

What does exist is this breath.
This moment.
This day.

Kalidas reminds us that the entire essence of life is contained within today not in some grand future achievement or in the perfection of the past, but in how fully we inhabit the present. Growth does not happen someday; it happens now, in small choices. Action does not belong to tomorrow; it belongs to what we do with this moment. Beauty is not something we find later; it is something we notice when we are present enough to see it.

The poem gently dissolves our attachment to time. Yesterday, he says, is only a dream not because it was meaningless, but because it no longer has substance. Tomorrow is merely a vision not because it lacks importance, but because it has not yet taken form. Both live only in the mind.

And yet, here is the paradox:
When today is lived well, it transforms both.

A present lived with awareness turns yesterday into a memory we can hold without pain, and tomorrow into a direction filled with hope rather than fear. This is not about forcing happiness or controlling outcomes; it is about showing up fully with honesty, compassion, and presence.

“Look well, therefore, to this day” is not a demand. It is an invitation.

An invitation to stop postponing life.
To stop waiting for clarity, healing, confidence, or permission.
To meet this moment exactly as it is unfinished, imperfect, alive.

Because this day ordinary as it may seem is the very breath of life itself.

And it is enough.