The No Bullshit Guide to Life

When I was in the army in Germany, sometime in the late fifties, I came up with the phrase “Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.” I didn’t do anything with it until the late sixties, when I was employed at Ackerman Associates Advertising in Oklahoma City. I was a “creative” guy, writing copy and coming up with “the big ideas.” One of my clients was Oklahoma City Federal Savings and Loan. Always an expert procrastinator, I was playing around with my guitar instead of trying to come up with a campaign for them, and in about 30 minutes wrote the song I’ve appended here. Our audiovisual director, Pat Catlett, put some stuff with it like swans swimming majestically, and the sun rising hopefully, and we turned it into a few sixty-second spots. We started them on the air on New Year’s Day in (I think) 1970.

The reaction was immediate and almost overwhelming. Within a month or so we’d received more than 50,000 cards, letters, and phone calls from folks in the Oklahoma City metro area, thanking us. They said it brought broken families back together, stopped people from committing suicide, etc., etc. Remember, this was the first time anyone had heard the phrase, and it had a powerful effect. It also swept across America almost overnight, appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, then moved around the world to English speaking countries like Australia.

So here it is more than 50 years later for your listening enjoyment, with the lyrics, including a middle verse (not in the recording) I added later to make it a more complete song.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

How long will those old worries
Run around inside your brain?
Why do you let what’s done and gone
Come back to cause you pain?
My brothers and my sisters
I remind you once again
Yesterday is yesterday
And so it will remain.

A thousand broken promises
Are burning in your mind.
You spend a lifetime longing
For the life you’ve left behind.
In a world of miracles
How can you be so blind?
Life is full of wonder
Only seek and you will find.

Today was once tomorrow
Till the rising of the sun.
The world is full of blessings
You may gather, one by one.
Think of where you’re going
And not what you might have done.
Time is time unending
But for you it’s just begun.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.