Tomorrow Never Comes and Yesterday Never Existed: Both are Always HERE and Now

 

by Elder Wewo Kotokay, Melanesian Conservatoin Elders, Inc.

1. Deconstructing the Phrases

• "Tomorrow never comes" / "Next year never arrives": This is a statement about the ever-receding future. The moment we label as "tomorrow" or "next year" ceases to be that label as soon as we enter it. At midnight, "tomorrow" becomes "today." On January 1st, "next year" becomes "this year." The future is perpetually a horizon we approach but never stand upon as the future. It's a destination that transforms into the present upon arrival.
• "Yesterday never existed" / "Last year never was": This is the symmetrical problem of the elusive past. The "yesterday" we refer to is not a tangible thing that exists somewhere. It is a mental construct—a memory, a record, a trace. The actual lived moment we call "yesterday" has vanished into non-being. It was, but it is not. We only ever have present recollections of it.
• "Yesterday never gone": This is the most subtle and interesting counterpoint. It suggests that the past is not truly lost but continues to exist in its effects—in memories, trauma, history, consequences, and the physical world (a scar, a ruined building, a fossil). In this view, the past is ontologically present in its causal power. It "never gone" because it actively shapes the now.

2. The Philosophical Core: The Paradox of the Present (The "Specious Present")

The tension between these phrases points to the central puzzle: What is the "now"?

• The Mathematical Now: If "now" is an infinitesimal point between past and future (like a geometric point), then it has no duration. We cannot live in, experience, or even point to such a "now." It is an abstraction.
• The Experiential Now (William James' "Specious Present"): Our lived present always has a duration—a few seconds. Within this brief span, we hold the just-past (the echo of a sentence) and the anticipation of the immediate future (the next word). So our "now" is always already containing a slice of what we call "past" and "future."
• This explains "yesterday never gone" psychologically—the immediate past is still present in our consciousness.
• It also shows why "tomorrow never comes"—because the anticipated future is already partially present as anticipation.

3. Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding

• St. Augustine's Paradox (Confessions, Book XI): He famously asked, "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not." He concluded that past and future only exist in the mind:
• The past exists as memoria (memory).
• The future exists as expectatio (expectation).
• The present exists as contuitus (attention).
  Thus, "tomorrow" exists only as a present expectation, and "yesterday" only as a present memory. They are modes of present consciousness.
• McTaggart's A-Series and B-Series:
• A-Series: Time as past, present, future (subjective, flowing). This is where our phrases live. The problem is that the labels "past," "present," and "future" are constantly changing (an event is future, then present, then past). This seems contradictory—how can one event have all three properties? This is the "unreality" of time for McTaggart.
• B-Series: Time as earlier-than and later-than (objective, static). In this view, 2023 is always earlier than 2024. "Next year" (2025) has a fixed, permanent relation to "this year" (2024). It always arrives in the B-Series, because its position is fixed. The "never comes" feeling is a feature of our A-Series perception.
• Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger): They focus on time as the structure of human experience (Dasein). For Heidegger, we are inherently temporal. We are "thrown" from a past, "projecting" into a future, and "falling" through the present. "Tomorrow never comes" because our "projection" always leaps ahead. "Yesterday never gone" because we are our past ("thrownness").
• Zen Buddhism & Mindfulness: These traditions take the paradox as a practical instruction. Dwelling on "yesterday" (regret, nostalgia) or "tomorrow" (anxiety, hope) is a source of suffering because these are mental illusions. The only reality is the eternal present moment. The goal is to fully inhabit the "now" that never moves, thus resolving the paradox through direct experience.

Synthesis and Conclusion

These phrases are not literally true in a physical sense (2025 will indeed follow 2024), but they are profoundly true at the level of conscious experience and linguistic reference.

1. They reveal the fluidity of temporal language. Words like "tomorrow" are indexicals—their meaning depends on the ever-changing "now" of the speaker.
2. They highlight the ontological mystery of time. The past and future do not "exist" in the way physical objects do. They exist as relational properties and mental phenomena.
3. They point to the primacy of the present as the locus of reality and experience. All we ever have is a moving, duration-filled present that carries the ghost of the past and the blueprint of the future within it.

In essence: "Tomorrow never comes" because the future is a mode of present anticipation. "Yesterday never existed" (as a present object) but also "never gone" because it exists as a present memory and causal force. The paradox is the very fabric of human temporality—we are beings stretched between a memory and a promise, forever anchored in a fleeting, yet expansive, now.