Essay on The Darkest Day, Wait Till Tomorrow Will Have Passed Away

Essay on The Darkest Day, Wait Till Tomorrow Will Have Passed Away

Introduction:

This line taken from Cowper’s poem. The Needless Alarm teaches us the value of having an optimistic outlook in life.

Development of Thought:

Optimism is the key to good life. Behind every dark cloud is a silver lining and this is what each man must realise in order to surmount the defeats and frustrations of life. However, very few people are able to wait optimistically for the new ‘Tomorrow’ to dawn. Man is more apt to wallow in self pity and make mountains out of his small worries.

But, change is the law of nature and it is foolish to think that our circumstances will always be as bad as they at present are.

The poets have always sung of the eternal hope of a brighter tomorrow; so also have lives of spirited men demonstrated how optimism and perseverance can help win the battles of life. Those who substitute fear and despair for courage and hope die before their death.

Conclusion:

Innumerable proverbs and sayings have given the message of hope, of courage, of perseverance and confidence. Whenever we find ourselves amidst darkness or defeat let us pull ourselves together and say “The Darkest day wait Till Tomorrow will Have Passed Away”.

This line has been taken from Cowper’^ poem, ‘The Needless Alaram’. It teaches us to be ever optimistic in life. Gloom and pessimism are like disease which should be shunned. Patience and courage are the qualities needed most by the people.

However overcast with threatening clouds the sky, so it will soon become bright and clear. As it is with the sky, so it is with life. However, dark our path, however full of misfortunes and agonies our life, we must not lose heart, but should be always courageous and optimistic.

The clouds of gloom are bound to wither away leaving us enwreathed in smiles. If we let hope bud when it is cloudy, it will bloom in sunshine. Pessimism is merely a case of intellectual indigestion. If we let depression creep into our minds, first they will be maimed and then the bodies killed. It is a dangerous foe while optimism is our best friend.

However, to be able to see the streak of silver lining that edges the threatening clouds is the prerogative of only a few. We are in the main short-sighted people. We blink at the future; our vision is circumscribed by the limits of the immediate, a something ‘that cannot be put by’.

We tremble at the vanguard cloud of coming days ‘like a guilty thing’. We wish, but dare not hope. We work but dare not expect. We are apologists in anticipation, defeated are we perform. We are the pessimists of the world whose outlook is timorous, whose attitude is basically defeatist.

Not so those others, who like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, can say, with breazy self-assurance in the face of all calamities, “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Voltaire laughs this smiling philosopher out of countenance, and yet indeed to be able to scan the horizon and discover the thin silver lining, to believe like Dickens’s Micawber that something will turn up at the next turning, to these indeed are among the proudest privilege to which a mere mortal can be admitted.

We are at best poor things in an imperfect world. A catalogue of our woes and grievances would make formidable reading.

We could sit and hear each other groan out our miseries into each other’s ears till doomsday. If in the face of all these there is one amongst us who is able to say that ‘it is a long road that has no turning’, does he not act as a buoyant spirit of hope and happiness?

The ability to see this silver lining is more an attitude than an art. It can be acquired neither from experience nor from philosophy, neither from life nor from literature. It “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh.”

Experience runs counter to it, and “yet it subsists. Philosophy may help us to put with our miseries with a stoic fortitude ‘that is too like despair’; or religious resignation, but in life’s deeper crises we find them an encumbrance rather than an encouragement.

These are not the sources from which the far-scanning optimist draws his eternal hope. No cloud but has for him a silver lining; no darkness that does not lead to a dawn. He hopes because he must, because he knows that ‘there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen’.

The Micawbers were an impossible pair in an impossible Dickensian world; and yet would that they were possible! Could we but rise on the stepping stones of our dead selves those vanished moments of discredited days into something greater than before; could we but tread habitually these sunlit heights which the soul is competent to gain; and know the stars and sunbeams, always radiant with ardor divine what a life indeed it would be for us, what a privilege to cherish to our hearts!

For the barest strip of silver lining, to whomsoever visible, has the power not only to illuminate his own individual soul, but to radiate light all around him. He who sees it scatters sunbeams. He quickens the darkness into a light that shimmers and eddies away like the dawn that Browning so gloriously described-

Forth one wavelet, and then another, curled,

Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, and then overflowed the world.

He is a centre of joy-giving radiation. He comes always with a cheery message that lightens the heavy and weary burden of all this unintelligible world. He is a perpetual source of happiness who can say with Browning-

My own hope is, a sun will pierce

The thickest cloud that ever stretched…

That after Last returns the First

Though a wide compass round be fetched.

It is foolish to think that our circumstances will always be as bad as they at present are. That would mean blind faith in fate. Time is passing away. What was present has now become past.

Nothing remains the same. Change is the law of universe. None can suffer throughout his life. In the desert of life, oases may be difficult to find but they are present. Patience and perseverance are good guides; Impatience will not mend matters but will make us suffer more and more.

Can we ever forget Shelley’s immortal line?

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

Shelley’s message to the world is, “Never despair. If just now there is the winter of poverty, failure or defeat, it shall soon be followed by the spring of prosperity, success and victory. Only don’t give in. Carry on the struggle bravely even during the most trying moments. The tide shall soon turn.

Indeed, despair is the most hideous disease that man suffers from. A little adversity can ruffle most of us. We cannot suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with smiles and equanimity. A minor defeat, a negligible fall in our fortunes unnerves us completely.

Once we have dark moments, we start thinking as if they will never end. Most of us make a mountain of the mole-hill of what majority of our worries are.

At such occasions it is worthwhile to remember that misfortunes never last long. Adversity is followed by light. Only we must persevere amidst adverse circumstances. We must go on undaunted till the tide again turns in our favour.

The darkest hour, wait till tomorrow

Would have passed away.

Adversity is one of the greatest tests of manliness. Those of us, who can face adversity cheerfully, come out braver and better men. Virtue untested is no virtue at all; so is our strength and endurance. Till we meet defeats and failures, we cannot be sure of possessing strength to rise above such misfortunes.

Failures are the pillar of success. Our failures should make us determined to achieve a grander success next time. We should always look for the silver lining in the dark clouds.

Since it is an eternal law that light is followed by darkness, why should we fret and fume if we have temporary reverses. Rather like brave Browning we should say-

Then welcome each rebuff

That turns earth’s smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Incorrigible optimism like Browning’s pays great dividends. If we cannot do anything for a life gone away, why not accept it as such? What we cannot cure, we must endure.

Once we face our misfortunes squarely, things begin to improve’ only we must have stamina to go through the winter of our life and patience to weight for spring.

“”‘innumerable stories of spirited men from history tell us how an optimistic, persevering person can cross all hurdles. There was Babur, the founder of Mughal Empire in India. He was orphaned at the age of twelve. His own maternal uncle turned him out of his kingdom. He was hounded by his enemies.

But this lion hearted boy, left with only half a dozen faithful companions, knew firmly chat he had reached the lowest ebb in life and from there he must now move upwards.

The darkness of night had engulfed him long enough; morning was sure to come soon. Babur did not lose heart; he struggled with courage and hope and won the richest empire of the world. So did King Bruce win freedom for his country after having been defeated nineteen times?

Optimism in its highest and purest phase is a form of courage and faith. It has inspired great leaders and it has sent men out on the long trails of exploration and adventure. It has kept scientists to their seemingly hopeless tasks, and it has been a candle in the murk of doubt in which the inventor exists. It lightens the task of the humble as well as the labours of the great.

It has been reported that on a certain dark day in the first year of the Second World War, it devolved on Winston Churchill to inform the members of his cabinet that France had been compelled to ask terms of the German invaders.

The head of the British Government looked down the table at the far from cheerful faces of his colleagues. “Gentlemen”, he said, “we now stand alone. And I may say that I find it inspiring”.

It is at such moments that optimism achieves a height where it is the noblest form of courage and a proof of undying faith.

It is optimism that cheers one in hours of loneliness and sorrow, in life- consuming solitude and frustration. We should always be hopeful. To give up hopes is tantamount to digging one’s own grave and lying in it. Let us not lose sight of the fact that the darkest hour is that before the dawn. Longfellow signs for us:

Be still, sad heart I and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining?

Thy face is the common fate of all.

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary

Those who substitute despondency for hope and fear for courage, die before their death. Such men are blots on the fair name of human race. Life is action, not mere contemplation. Let us do the deed and wait patiently for the result which is in the womb of future.

It is the darkest before dawn,’ Every cloud has a silver lining’; ‘Hope sustains life’; ‘While there is life, there is hope’; ‘A drowning man catches at a straw’ are not meaningless proverbs. They do convey a meaning; they have a message of hope, of courage and of perseverance and of confidence.

Have patience, learn to hear God’s laughter in the thunder of the clouds, and see the signatures of God in the flashes of lightning. See the silver lining, the ray of hope which is always there to brighten our dark hours.

Have patience, hold your ground. If your day is the darkest, it cannot be darker, wait till tomorrow, the ‘day’ will have passed away and a new day, a new bright shining sun will dawn.