The Greatest Waste in the World

We remember two sentences recently read. One from an unnamed source says, “The future is that time when you’ll wish you’d done what you aren’t doing now.”¹ The second is from John Grimes, “The greatest waste in the world,” he said, As the difference between what we are, and what we could be.”² Let’s take the first: “The future is that time when you’ll wish you’d done what you aren’t doing now,” (or what you should be doing now). Sometimes we have a way of supposing that time will somehow take care of what we should or shouldn’t do. In one sense it is so. Life does go on⎯and someone somehow seems to manage to do many of the essentials. But that doesn’t relieve us of accountability for our own personal performance⎯from doing what we should do, from living as we should live. If we don’t learn and prepare for life we shall not reach our highest possible performance. If we don’t teach our children they will not be as well taught. If we don’t help to make a happy home, home will not be as happy. If we don’t live by the laws of health, of morals, and with respectful manners, we shall be much less than we might have been. We are grateful for those who develop skills, for those who pay their debts, for those who serve many good causes, for those who make their own way in the world, and add something else besides. But no matter what anyone else does to cover or to fill in for us, there are still opportunities and obligations that are personally ours, and sooner or later we shall be looking back and wishing we had done some good things we haven’t done, and wishing we hadn’t done what we should be doing now. “The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could be.”