Unwillingness to Wait

There are many things in life for which we must be willing to wait. But too often, too young, there is too much tendency to try to rush life, to have it all now, to exhaust its experiences and force or seize things before their proper time and season things both material and intangible. There is a tendency to crowd the future, to crowd the calendar and the clock, to forget not only eternity, and a reasonable future in this life, but sometimes unhappily even to forget tomorrow morning.

“In. . . modern society,” said David Starr Jordan, “there is a tendency to precocious growth. . . . What is worth having must bide its time. Precocious fruit is not good fruit. . . . To guard his own future is the greatest duty of the young man. If all men lived in such fashion that remorse was unknown, the ills of society would mostly vanish. . . . the subtle incitement to vice. . . is shown in precocious knowledge, the loss of the bloom of youth, the quest for pleasures unearned because sought for out of time.”

Any premature harvest is likely to fall far short of expectation. Forced fruit, unripened fruit, is likely to be bitter. And it should be said that some fruit is bitter at any season the fruit of indulgence, of unwise pursuits and practices that lead to dissipation, sorrow, loss of self-respect, and an unquiet conscience. As Robert Burns said in “Tam O’ Shanter,”

But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white then melts forever.

There are some things for which we must be willing to wait. And there are some things that should never be indulged in. Some things are never worth the price paid. We need to take a long look at all values, all pleasures, all experiences. Nothing is deeply, lastingly desirable that is not earned, deserved suitably acquired, and in its appropriate season.