Pressure and Procrastination

We wouldn’t change the giving of gifts or the festivities or the feasting. We wouldn’t eliminate the lights or the trimming of trees or the fond conspiracy about presents of the wide-eyed wonder of children at this welcome and wonderful season. We wish, of course, that we could prepare under less pressure, but the pressure is partly because of our own procrastination. We know right now, as we knew a year ago, that all this would soon be again upon us. But most of us do little about it until it comes close. And from this perhaps we could learn a lesson and do something sooner about things which are sure to come. We know right now, as surely as we know that another year will come quickly, that life constantly calls for an accounting. We know that debts come due, and we shouldn’t let the time of accounting catch us without some earnest effort in advance to meet what shall surely come. We know that if we want friends when we need them, we must be friendly when others need us. We know right now that if we want to be trusted when much may depend upon it, we must give people reason to trust us all along the way. We know that if we want to be believed at some particularly important time, we must earn the right to be believed in small and seemingly unimportant things. We know that if we want men to be merciful, we must deal with them as we would be dealt with. We know right now that if we ever lift our head above the common level, men will look at our lives with searching scrutiny, and if we want to be able to stand their gaze, we had better make the record look as it should look now, and always and under all conditions, and not wait until the pressure is upon us. These are but a few of the lessons we might well learn from facing the pressure of this season again so breathlessly soon. Only a short while ago it seemed so surely that there was plenty of time to prepare for it. And there was⎯then. But the years come quickly, and we could well do something sooner about things which are sure to come.