Procrastination

If we don’t do it now,

we might as well forget it.

Tomorrow does not exist.

And yet it exerts pressure:

The things we don’t do Now

push us in the Now,

even from non-existence.

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We imagine we’ll act tomorrow, but tomorrow never arrives. Later is a lie we tell ourselves to escape fear. Courage lives only in the Now—our only real life.

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“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Somehow, we never notice that tomorrow never arrives. Each morning, it is today again, and we are faced with the same decision we put off. Tomorrow is an imaginary storage locker in which we dump all the choices that frighten or annoy us. All our lives, we have lived as if this fictional place were real, as if it contained infinite amounts of time for making decisions and taking action.

When I say, “each morning is today again,” I’m not exaggerating. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Every moment is every moment again. In his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo illustrates that our awareness is rooted in the present moment with his experience of reciting a poem. He imagines the words, line by line, in front of him. Each line comes toward him, he speaks it, and it recedes behind him as the next line takes its place.

This is how it really is. We stand firmly in the Now. It is always now, and actual events pass through this eternal Now. What recedes passes into memory, which we know is unreal, since it so often fails to reappear—and when it does, it does so Now. What is coming toward us is a projection of memory in the other direction, which we also know is unreal, since it mostly does not come into the Now at all. The fact is, we actually live in eternity. Past and future are fictions. And we can't do anything in fictional time.

Yet we convince ourselves that putting things off is beneficial. We think we are waiting for the right moment, or for clarity, or for strength. In fact, what we are waiting for is the disappearance of fear. That disappearance will not come. Courage is never safe. It is always required now, in the actual present, the only real existence we possess.

This is the lie of later. Later tells us time will stretch itself out to accommodate our hesitation. But each moment in which we delay is a moment that disappears into nothingness. At best, we can summon its ghost to appear in the Now as a memory. But the energy, the life of that moment, which comes from the Now, has vanished forever. Every procrastination steals from the finite portion of life allotted to us.

And there is another, less obvious cost. The choices we do not make become projections, ghostly presences in the non-existent future. The unsent letter, the unspoken forgiveness, the path not taken press on us, demanding entry into our Now.

When we recognize the lie of later, we finally accept that life is never lived at some other time. Every moment of facing what presents itself in the Now is a moment of courage, and however small the choice is, it must be faced in the present. And when the choice is momentous, life-changing, the courage required in the Now is even greater. But that’s all the more reason not to fictionalize it. Later is the imaginary place where transformation withers and dies. Now is the actual place where it can happen.

Don’t be frightened or annoyed by this truth. If later does not exist, then there is nothing to wait for. The Now is right here, with us continually. To embrace it is not always easy, but it is always necessary, for it is our only real life.