“Yesterday’s tomorrow is today,” is a line from the poem Bygones, written by the late Marina Keegan. Keegan died tragically in a car crash on her way to celebrate her father’s 55th birthday in 2012. She had just graduated college and was set to begin what was to be a promising career as writer at The New Yorker.
The poem is largely a reflection on a future she would never experience. Lamenting the many demands ambition places on us as we start our life after school. In it, she yearns for a simpler present.
She is also attempting to make peace with a past that perhaps has led her and her classmates astray. The grind of hard work that will lead to what exactly?
The word bygones doesn’t appear in the poem but the sentiment of letting bygones be bygones is echoed in the lines, “The middle of the universe is here, is tonight, And everything behind is a sunk cost. Lost in our oceans and our oceans are deep.”
She is reflecting on the past while at the same time telling us to let it go.
My relationship to my past, like most I presume, is conflicted. I long for simpler times, love to see old pictures and videos from my youth and that of my family. I excavate portions of my past to help me understand my current behaviors. I question decisions and paths not taken.
Talking a brisk stroke down amnesia lane can be cathartic but spending too much time there wastes our present. We are not recognizing that the middle of the universe is here tonight, rather we can get stuck in the gravity of our own black holes forever.
I have been thinking about the last lines of this poem a lot lately. They are wise and hopeful and devastating because tragically and ironically it so embodied the author’s own life.
“And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.”
Life is hard. Our past is riddled with mistakes. Our future is filled with uncertainty. And yet here we are in the middle of the universe, surrounded by beauty – both simple and grand.
Recommendation of the Week: Watch Keegan reciting Bygones. You will smile, laugh and perhaps cry. Most of all you will be present. If you’re interested in more of her work, check out her collection of poems and essays, “The Opposite of Loneliness.”
Consider sharing this with someone in the middle of your universe.