Each Day Is Decisive

The choices in life are always and endless. Every hour, every instant gives us something to decide — where we go, what we learn, what we do with time, whether we play or work, develop or drift, acquire good habits or bad, think good thoughts or unworthy ones. Each choice determines our direction, at least for that particular time. And while the black and white areas may be comparatively easy to choose between, the wide gray areas may be a harmless looking mixture of a little both of good and bad, yet like small doses of some poisons, the cumulative effect may be fatal. Temptation is always present. Compromises of principle are almost always possible. We never live in isolation from all evil. The cheap, the shoddy, the downright bad are always offered. The ultimately good and right are always there also. And while we should eliminate evil from our environment as fully as we can, yet when we can’t control circumstances outside ourselves, the one thing for which we are responsible is control of ourselves. “One of the illusions of life,” said Emerson, “is that the present hour is not the critical [or] decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is [a decisive] day…”¹ The decisive time of life is now — this hour, this moment. “Some day, in the years to come,” said Phillips Brooks, “you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.”² Each day is decisive, each hour is decisive, each decision is decisive. The struggle is always, the choice is now. The direction is indicated every day. And as Ivor Griffith said it: “Character is a victory, not a gift.”³