Always Getting Ready to Live

There are two sentences from ancient sources that seem to emphasize the swift passing of the seasons: One is from Epicurus, who said: “The fool, with all his other faults, has this also: he is always getting ready to live”¹ ⎯never quite doing, we might add, but always going to be about to begin⎯sometime soon⎯maybe even tomorrow⎯but not right now. The second is from Seneca, who said: “Oh, how much good time you lose over a bad matter!”² Let’s take the second sentence first⎯wasting good time over a bad matter. We delay often what we ought to face up to. We turn over problems⎯over and over. We procrastinate often what we know we are obliged to do, what we know we must do⎯things that won’t go away, that will still be there no matter where we left them: schooling, preparation, paying debts, seeing the doctor, facing problems, postponing repentance. And so we let matters often become worse than they were, or harder to fix than they might have been at first. We postpone clearing misunderstandings. We often wrestle with the same worries, over and over, without reaching decisions. We often reshuffle the same pile of papers, without reaching solutions⎯not getting on with it⎯not getting that thing done so that we can do something else. We postpone giving up habits; postpone putting our affairs in order, and so let time waste away. “You may delay, but time will not,”³ said Benjamin Franklin. “Oh, to get on with the business of living life, and of cleaning out the clutter of the past and pursuing the next project. There are purposes; there are possibilities, and the seasons move swiftly; and all of us need to prepare, to perform, to be a part of the productive process⎯not merely postponers, nor merely protesters, but producers. “… this life is the time for men… to perform their labors.”⁴ “The fool, with all his other faults, has this also: he is always getting ready to live.”