Delight Springs

Friday, June 10, 2016

Doomsday's the best

Deadlines are arbitrary, in the larger scheme. But for us practiced procrastinators who love "later" too much, they're indispensable. They're the point of temporal convergence when there must be a reckoning, when we must toe the line.

Henry knew. “In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

Did he meet all his deadlines? No. Who does? "I love deadlines," said Douglas Adams. "I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

But we'll all meet the last one. That ought to put a little more resolution in a procrastinator's step and keep him moving, not to toe the line but to extend it and finally transcend it.

If every day is Doomsday, as Emerson said one day, then every moment is a deadline. “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour."

 We can't really be thinking that every moment, we'd die too soon of stress and worry. But there are days, deadline days, when it's a good thought to hold in mind. "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year,” and get on with it.

Image result for new yorker cartoon deadlines

6:30/5:31, 60/95, 8:02
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