"Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name"
About this Quote
Tagore turns a daily fact into a moral challenge: stop laundering the present through stale language. “Do not say, ‘It is morning,’” isn’t a cute Zen koan; it’s an indictment of how quickly naming becomes a kind of dismissal. Call it morning and you smuggle in yesterday’s habits, yesterday’s mood, yesterday’s script. The phrase “a name of yesterday” suggests that even neutral words arrive preloaded with memory and routine, turning perception into autopilot.
The image of the “newborn child that has no name” is doing heavy work. A nameless infant is pure immediacy but also responsibility: you can’t treat it casually, can’t assume you already know what it is. Tagore wants the same ethical attention applied to time itself. See the day as unclaimed, unclassified, not yet folded into your personal archive. That’s the subtext: wakefulness isn’t just sensory freshness, it’s a refusal to let the past dictate what you’re allowed to notice.
Context matters. Tagore wrote in a Bengal negotiating modernity, nationalism, and colonial pressures; his work often resists mechanical, imported ways of living without retreating into nostalgia. This line reads like a quiet rebellion against the bureaucratic mindset that catalogs life into predictable units. By stripping “morning” of its label, he makes room for the radical possibility that today could demand a different self than yesterday did. The intent isn’t escapism; it’s training for presence as an act of freedom.
The image of the “newborn child that has no name” is doing heavy work. A nameless infant is pure immediacy but also responsibility: you can’t treat it casually, can’t assume you already know what it is. Tagore wants the same ethical attention applied to time itself. See the day as unclaimed, unclassified, not yet folded into your personal archive. That’s the subtext: wakefulness isn’t just sensory freshness, it’s a refusal to let the past dictate what you’re allowed to notice.
Context matters. Tagore wrote in a Bengal negotiating modernity, nationalism, and colonial pressures; his work often resists mechanical, imported ways of living without retreating into nostalgia. This line reads like a quiet rebellion against the bureaucratic mindset that catalogs life into predictable units. By stripping “morning” of its label, he makes room for the radical possibility that today could demand a different self than yesterday did. The intent isn’t escapism; it’s training for presence as an act of freedom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Live in the Moment |
|---|
More Quotes by Rabindranath
Add to List
