Each year when the Bronnie’s birthday comes around it feels . . . what would be the best way to say this? Well, it actually feels as if the emotions stirred up by taking this trip down memory lane are potent enough to power a small household appliance.

It made me wonder: Is this a one-of-a-kind thing? Is there any other magazine that does this kind of musing to celebrate its birthday every single year? Why not? Because community publications don’t last? Or the community doesn’t care?

The Bronnie’s community cares. It’s been caring for 17 years now and that is sort of rare. For the exact same team of people to keep bringing you the Bronnie is even rarer. That’s probably why other publications don’t do the yearly birthday thing – the people who would have remembered aren’t there any more.

The new people might ramble along the archives and think, yikes! It’s this publication’s birth month. Time to look back at what the old fogeys did in the beginning. In this case, gulp, we’re the fogeys.

And we remember. We reminisce, which is not always a safe thing to do without a handkerchief. It’s Ogden Nash who said that one man’s remorse is another man’s reminiscence. In ‘I’m a Stranger Here Myself’ he writes that everything is not gold that glisters and everything is not a tear that glistens.

That’s the thing with hindsight – you have a better shot at disentangling the glistering and glistening.

And foresight? The only sure thing is that the future is getting shorter. So, I’m not going there right now, okay?

Eckhart Tolle writes that “unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence”.

I recently came upon a Sanskrit poem by Kalidasa, an Indian poet and playwright who lived in the fourth and fifth century AD. He writes:

“Look to this day, for it is life, the very breath of life. In its brief course lie all the realities of your existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of beauty. For yesterday is only a dream, and tomorrow is but a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.”

So, what do you feel when you look at this day? So many of us excel in starving ourselves of the happiness that is waiting in every moment because we think it could only be experienced when a cluster of external stuff lines up in a certain way.

Madisyn Taylor says that the hectic pace of modern existence gives us an easy out; we shelve our wishes so we can cope more effectively with the challenges of the present, presumably to have more time and leisure to get stuff done in the future. Or we tell ourselves that we will chase our dreams someday once we have pulled off other less significant stuff.

In truth, if you ask yourself what you’re really waiting for, you’ll discover that there is absolutely no rightful reason why you shouldn’t feel exactly the way you want to feel some day, right now. Feeling lies in the now. So does being and so does doing.

The Dalai Lama said that there are only two days in the year that nothing can be done: One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow.

You know that quote that says, “there is no time like the present”. It’s wrong, actually. It should be, “there is no time but the present”. The rest is not time – it’s just stuff in your mind. Now is the only time you can breathe in and out, smell jasmine, let a puppy lick you in the face, drink coffee and savour the sweetness of your birthday cake.

So, close your eyes, girlfriend. We’re going to blow out the Bronnie’s 17 birthday candles and make a wish. My wish for you is, as the event organisers say, “bums on seats”. May you be where you are; present where you’re sitting right now so that you can “look well to this day” in true Winnie the Pooh tradition:
“What day is it?” asked Pooh.

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favourite day,” said Pooh.