When You Reach September

There is something glorious yet sobering about the swift passing seasons⎯spring, summer, fall⎯and winter follows⎯and there is much we’ve done, much we might have done, much we should have done that we too long delay. Mary Singleton added some thoughts on an old saying on this subject:

Ah, “all things come to those who wait,”

(I say these words to make me glad),

But something answers soft and sad,

“They come, but often come too late.”¹

Too late, sometimes⎯sometimes too soon. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday,”² said Don Marquis. But Emerson perhaps put the cap line on the subject when he asked a searching question: “What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?” And then he answered: “Five minutes of today are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium.”³ And Dante added his touch: “To men prepared, delay is always hurtful.”⁴ And it can be hurtful also to those who are unprepared. “By and by never comes,”⁵ St. Augustine said. Well, it all adds up to this: There is an endlessness of life, as time flows into eternity; but the future will be what we do with the present, plus what we have done with the past; and five minutes of today are worth as much and in one sense may be worth much more⎯than five minutes in the next millennium, because the sooner we do what we should do, the better we shall be; the sooner we become what we should become, the better we shall be. Decisions are important. Direction is important. And whatever we ought to be doing, we’d better be doing it; whatever we ought to be, we’d better be becoming⎯ “For… this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God;… this life is the day… to perform [the] labors”⁶ of this life. “What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?”

Oh, it’s a long, long while

From May to December,

But the days grow short

When you reach September.⁷