Tomorrow. Noun. A magical place that’s home to countless goals, resolutions, and promises made with idealized commitment instead of true dedication. Can be used interchangeably with someday.

Okay, you got me. That’s no dictionary definition. That’s my own little twist on a concept with which we’re all a bit too familiar.

We human beings take tomorrow for granted under the assumption that the clock will just keep ticking. Why do so many of us fail to realize that tomorrows can’t be downloaded online or caught on a trending app? They come and go as they please.

I would be thrilled to step foot into Tomorrowland to meet the version of myself who’s built from everything I ever put off doing. I’ve lost count of all the opportunities I missed in an effort to be the perfect little student, to do the perfect job at work, to be the human equivalent of a cardboard cutout. I allowed my bad days to consume me and influence my perception of tomorrow. It’s okay to have bad days. That’s one of the things that makes us human. It’s not quite as okay to anticipate a bad tomorrow because of one bad day.

When I think of my loved ones whose tomorrows stopped coming, I’m saddened by one overwhelming piece of reality. They all had hopes for the future, hopes that will never be realized. When we mourn our beloved departed, we mourn all the tomorrows we’ll never share with them. How can we bring their lost hopes to life?

That’s a grander question than I intended to generate. I don’t have an answer to it, and quite frankly, I’m not seeking one. The knowledge of unrealized dreams may be enough to motivate us to be our best selves. I think we have to embrace all that’s thrown at us in order to find some way to enliven the prospects of our loved ones gone too soon.

So please, let’s take a moment to honor all the hopes, all the wishes, all the dreams that never came true. Let’s honor the calendars frozen on one tragic date. In memory of the unlived somedays, let’s make our tomorrows ones for the books. They’ll be so brilliant that they’ll go down in history, but not textbook history. They’ll go down in our own personal histories and become stories about how we tried. You can’t ask anything more of a person than to just try.

I want my tomorrows to become treasured yesterdays. I want my story to be filled with laughs, tears, memories, mistakes, and all the heartbreakingly beautiful intricacies of the human experience. I don’t want tomorrow to be the grand prize of a race I don’t run. Tomorrow will be woven into my personal narrative so the future doesn’t stay an imaginative concept forever. As a relatively new adult, I’m making mistakes and learning lessons along the way. The most valuable lesson I have learned is to make tomorrow today.