The definition of a cliché is a phrase that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.
These phrases are said generally whenever is someone is looking for advice, but they aren’t anything specific or give any real help. I think it’s easier to think of them as something people say to express sympathy for the misfortune of others than anything else. However, I think there is one phrase that does not deserve even the recognition of sympathy.
“Take it one day at a time” means to simply focus on the problems that affect your life in the present moment, and not to worry about the long-term events that you want to achieve or experience. The phrase comes up with synonyms like calculate and plan, but it means the opposite of those words. This phrase means to worry only about what directly affects you and react to what problems come your way, first and foremost.
The real problem with seeing the world that way is that it is tunnel vision. Not having any long-term goal or even vague ambition of the future leaves you stuck in neutral. Staying in same place may feel better than failing and falling behind at something, but that doesn’t lead to any kind of growth or change as a person.
There needs to be either a struggle or endeavor to challenge your own capacity to think and live as a person.
There is a particular song that touches upon that idea and speaks to some of the problems with the notion. In the song “I’m Sorry” by Joyner Lucas, he raps the first verse about his suicidal friend writing his final words and killing himself, and in the second, about his reaction and thoughts on his friend’s suicide. One line that comes toward the end of the first verse and is repeated in the second is, “Grandma told me I should take it one day at a time / And damn it, look at me now.”
It’s an extreme case, but his message is that his friend was told to only think one day at a time, how he might live through the day with his depression and that didn’t allow it to get any better. It was advice even his grandmother gave him, but if he followed it to the letter, it only kept him stuck with the same habits, attitudes and defensive worldview.
Perhaps the most important thing the phrase ignores is how not thinking about the future means you’re not truly thinking about yourself. I mean that in the context of self-reflection and considering the actions that you’ve done and what you can do to change to be a better person. The phrase means that you think about what the world will do to you, but not about what sort of person you’re projecting onto others. That self-reflection makes you value yourself more and think more about who you want to be and how you can do that, rather than solely on yourself right now.
