Author Ana Alexandra Resende wrote an opinion piece titled "Life Doesn't Start Tomorrow," in which she warns about the dangerous human tendency to postpone life until tomorrow. The article begins by examining the expression "I'll do it tomorrow," arguing that this seemingly harmless phrase hides a trap, because when things calm down in one area, problems immediately arise in another. The author notes that we have more tools to save time than ever before, but paradoxically we feel a permanent lack of time and exhaustion, transforming the time saved into available time to do even more things.
Resende also addresses the issue of money and responsibility, acknowledging that it is necessary to work and pay bills, but warning about the difference between being responsible and spending life worried about what might go wrong. She emphasizes that if we wait to start living when we have money, stability, and problems small enough, the wait will be long.
A significant part of the article is dedicated to the author's reflection as an archaeologist. She describes how she spends time studying the remains of people who have already died, finding everyday objects of these people, and questions the irony of spending so much time trying to understand how the dead lived while we have difficulty remembering to live while we are still here. The author argues that living doesn't mean taking extraordinary trips, but rather simple things like having a coffee without looking at the phone, calling someone we remember, or saying "I love you" while we can still say it.
The article ends with the central message that life doesn't begin after we solve our problems, after we have more time, after the children grow up, or after we retire. The author proposes that we should save a question for the mornings when we wake up worried: not what we have to do today, but what we will live today. She concludes that we still have an advantage over future archaeologists who will one day study our remains: we are still here and we can still choose.
