Lights Along the Road · Hiroshi Kanda
Chapter 14: Tomorrow Is a New Day
The Words: L. M. Montgomery, 1908
In 1908, L. M. Montgomery published Anne of Green Gables, the story of a talkative, imaginative orphan girl named Anne who is taken in by an older brother and sister on their farm. In chapter 21, Anne makes a terrible mistake. She bakes a cake for an important guest and, by accident, flavours it with a medicine for aching muscles instead of vanilla. She is ashamed and in tears. But that evening she says to Marilla, the woman who has taken her in: "isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" These are a character's words, but Montgomery wrote them, and they have comforted readers ever since.
The Life Behind the Words
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in 1874. Her mother died when Lucy was not yet two, and she was raised by her grandparents in a quiet farming community near the sea. She loved books and nature, and she began writing as a child. As a young woman she worked as a teacher and for a time at a newspaper, and she sold many short stories and poems to magazines. When she finished Anne of Green Gables, several publishers turned it down, and she put the manuscript away in a hatbox. Later she took it out and tried once more, and this time it was accepted.
Anne of Green Gables was a great success, and it has been loved by readers in many languages for more than a century. Montgomery went on to write many more books about Anne and about other girls who, like her, used imagination to brighten hard lives. Her own adult life had its hardships too, and she knew sorrow well. She died in 1942. Perhaps because she knew sorrow, her books are full of the hope that each new day can bring.
What the Words Ask of Us
Anne's words are simple, but they hold a deep kindness. Mistakes can stay with us for a long time. We replay them in our minds, feel ashamed again and again, and sometimes start to believe that we are nothing but our mistakes. Anne does not deny her mistake. She cried over it and felt it fully. But she also knows that a new day is coming, clean and open, which does not yet hold any of yesterday's errors. This is not careless forgetting. It is the hope that lets us try again.
Imagine Ben, a ten-year-old boy who forgot his lines in the school play in front of everyone. He comes home miserable and refuses to eat dinner. His father sits with him and tells him that tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it yet. Ben is not sure he believes it. But the next morning the sun is shining, a friend asks him to play football, and nobody seems to remember the play at all. Ben feels lighter. The day really is new, and he gets to begin it.
Similar Words From Around the World
A traditional saying in Korean says that the beginning is half of the whole task. Long ago, Aristotle, who wrote in Greek, also quoted a proverb with the same meaning in his Politics (5.4). The echo helps explain why Anne's thought is so encouraging. Each new day is a beginning, and beginnings carry great power. When we start the morning freshly, without dragging all of yesterday's mistakes behind us, we have already done half of the work of making it a good day.
In the first of his letters to his young friend Lucilius (Letters 1.1), Seneca gives this advice. In my own words: claim yourself for yourself, and gather and keep the time that until now has been taken from you or has slipped away. Seneca's echo adds a sense of action to Anne's hope. A new day without mistakes is a gift, but it is also a task. We can let it slip away, as so many days do, or we can gather it up and use it well. Anne, of course, would add that we will probably make a few new mistakes along the way.
Living It Today
Anne's words can help people of every age. A student who failed a test can begin studying again tomorrow. A worker who made an embarrassing error in a meeting can return the next morning with a fresh mind. A parent who lost patience with a child can apologise and start again. An older person who regrets things from long ago can still treat each morning as a clean page. None of this erases what happened, but it frees us to live forward.
Here is something to try tonight. Before you sleep, think of one mistake from the day, small or large. Say to yourself honestly what happened and what you might do differently. Then let it go, and say Anne's words quietly: tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet. When you wake up, notice the first light or the first sound of the morning. The day is new, and it is waiting for you to begin it.
Chapter 15: The Bird of Happiness at Home
The Words: Maurice Maeterlinck, 1908
In 1908, The Blue Bird, a play by Maurice Maeterlinck written in French, was performed for the first time. It tells the story of a brother and sister, Tyltyl and Mytyl, who live in a poor woodcutter's cottage. On Christmas Eve, a fairy asks them to find the Blue Bird, the bird of happiness, for a little girl who is ill. Guided by Light, and joined by their dog, their cat and other household things that have come to life, they search far and wide, from the Land of Memory to the Kingdom of the Future. They never manage to keep the bird. But when they wake up at home, they find that their own dove, which had been there all along, is blue. In my own words, the play says: the happiness we search for in faraway places is often already with us at home.
The Life Behind the Words
Maurice Maeterlinck was born in 1862 in Europe and wrote in French. He first trained and worked in law, but his heart was in writing. His early plays were quiet, mysterious and dreamlike, full of silence and half-spoken feelings, and they made him famous as a poet of the theatre. He also wrote thoughtful books about nature, including a well-loved study of the life of bees, in which he looked at the small world of the hive with wonder.
The Blue Bird was different from his earlier work: brighter, warmer and full of humour, a fairy play that children and adults could enjoy together. It was performed in many languages and became one of the best-known plays of its time. In 1911 Maeterlinck received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lived a long life and died in 1949, at the age of eighty-six. In many languages, a blue bird has since become a picture of happiness that is close at hand.
What the Words Ask of Us
Maeterlinck's play is a fairy tale, but its question is very real. How often do we believe that happiness lies somewhere else: in another job, another town, another life, another time? We travel, we wait, we search. Such journeys can teach us a great deal, as the children's journey teaches them about memory, nature and the future. But the play suggests that the greatest lesson of the journey is to see our own home with new eyes. The bird seemed ordinary only because the children had never truly looked at it.
Picture Clara, a woman of thirty who has moved from job to job, always sure that the next one will finally make her happy. One evening, after another disappointing week, she sits on her small balcony with her old cat on her lap. Her sister calls, and they laugh for an hour about childhood memories. When Clara puts the phone down, she notices how content she feels. Nothing new has happened. But for a moment she has seen the blue bird that was sitting beside her all the time.
Similar Words From Around the World
In the 1600s, the thinker Blaise Pascal, who wrote in French, left a collection of notes now called the Pensées, which means "thoughts". In one of them (fragment 139 in one well-known numbering), he says that much of human unhappiness comes from one thing: not knowing how to stay quietly in one room. Pascal's echo is sharper than the play, but it points in the same direction. The blue bird is not found by endless running. It is found by learning to rest at home.
The Masnavi, a great poem written in Persian by the poet Rumi in the 1200s, opens with a reed flute. In my own words: listen to the reed, how it tells its story and sings of separation. Ever since it was cut from the reed bed, its song has been full of longing to return. This echo adds a deeper note to Maeterlinck's play. The search for happiness, Rumi suggests, is really a longing to go home, to the source we came from. In Rumi's faith, that source is God; the play speaks more simply of a cottage and a family. Both say that what we long for is closer to us than we think.
Living It Today
Maeterlinck's play can speak to anyone who is searching. A young person dreaming of a different life can enjoy the dream while also noticing the good things already near. Someone who has moved far from home can look for happiness in the new place, not only in memories. A person who has worked for many years towards a distant goal can pause to enjoy the people and small joys they already have. An older reader may smile at the play, having learned its lesson long ago.
This week, try a short search for the blue bird at home. Walk slowly through your own home or your own street, as if you were a visitor seeing it for the first time. Look for three things that make you happy and that you usually do not notice: a window with good light, a cup you love, the voice of someone in the next room. Name them quietly to yourself. The children in the play travelled through many strange lands. You may find, as they did, that the bird was waiting for you at home.