By Rev Fr Giles Ngwa Forteh
A wise and learned teacher once put this question to his students: "Name ten things with wings that fly swiftly." The quick-witted made their rounds of earthly creatures and only found eight. When their wit was exhausted the master completed the list.
"Time and opportunities," he said, "these come and go at a terrific speed." Then, a second question followed: "What is it that can make these two fly and pass without any effect?" The students racked their brains and gave many answers: sloth, poor health, ignorance, jealousy, and so on. "You are all right," the master said. "There is still one tendency, a most destructive one. Procrastination is its name. Write it down in bold letters and be on your watch, less it should suck the better part of you."
Nothing in the entire history of mankind has impeded success and wrecked the chances of individuals and nations like the monster called procrastination. Literally, to procrastinate means to keep it for tomorrow, "to keep delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring." The principal strategy of this monster is to deceive its victims that the right moment has not yet come and that there is an endless supply of time and opportunities. In short, propitious time and best opportunities are still to come.
Recently I came into contact with an anonymous piece of writing, entitled Procrastinator's Creed. I found the following firm declarations of the Procrastinator most striking:
I shall never rush into a job without a lifetime
I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already
I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuse
I firmly believe that tomorrow holds great possibilities and astounding
discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.
I believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given
I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle is not exactly zero
A couple of years ago I met an old and embittered man who trembles and frets at the mere thought of taking a retirement after 40 years of service. His retirement seems to have come to come suddenly, like the labour pains. The truth of the matter is that he has not built a house and made other adequate preparations for his retirement. When his story is told we see a man of great ambitions, whose unfulfilled dream was to be a mansion.
While his friends embarked on transforming their small dreams into bricks, wood and zinc, proceeding step by step until they built to finish their houses, the big dreamer wallowed in his dream and waited until he will be able to execute his project in one unbroken action from foundation to roof. He has waited for forty years for that propitious moment which is yet to come!
In the life of every person there are some great moments of decision which, if seized and acted upon, become a turning point and a defining step unto triumph and fortune; and, if mismanaged or neglected deprives life of what could make it better. This is what William Shakespeare refers to as "a tide in the affairs of men." Through the mouth of Brutus in the play Julius Caesar, he says:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat
(Act IV, Sc 3.)
During their journey in the desert, under the guidance and direction of divine providence, the Israelites were raised upon such a "tide", and they failed to take the moment and to act. At the wilderness of Paran, Yahweh ordered Moses to send spies to explore the land of Canaan which he was going to give Israel, the land of "milk and honey".
After exploring the land for 40 days the spies returned to Moses and Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh. Caleb and Joshua were in favour of an immediate attack: "We should attack now and take the land; we are strong enough to conquer it" (Num 13:30). The other ten spies gave a false report: "That Land doesn't even produce to feed the people who live there. Everybody we saw was very tall, and we even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that is how we must have looked at them" (Num 13:33). This was a great moment of decision that Israel was losing. It was the moment in which Yahweh was giving them their land, their future. The detractors were applying one of the articles of the Procrastinator's creed: I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuse
In the New Testament we find an inspiring example of someone who seizes the moment and acts upon it in a positive way. In the marvellous story of the conversion of the Prodigal Son, we are told that when he came to his senses and decided that he was going to return to his father and ask forgiveness. Then, he took the decision: "So he got up and started back to his father" (Lk 15:20).
Primary school pupils, some years ago, recited a rhyme which had the following words: "Quick, says the clock, quick, quick, what you have to do, do quick." The man who removed the mountain began by carrying away small stones. The falling drops will at last wear the stone. It may require that we begin with a small step, and then go on. Every day presents challenges and opportunities for growth and progress, be they in the material or in the spiritual domain. Now is the time, seize the moment, take a positive action. Is it repentance? Is it the call to do some good or carry out some activity that will be beneficial to you and to others? On such a full sea are we now afloat
What a beautiful reflection? It reminds me of the line of Henri cardinal Newman which Fonlon loved to quote; a line that read like "nothing would be done if a man waited to do it so well that fault would not be found with it."
There is also the struggle of the conversion of St-Augustine where he presents proscatination as his sole and dominant weakness. Inasmuch as he wanted to embrace the call for change, for spiritual maturity and conversion to the Truth that is the person of Christ, so much more did his human frame kept urging him to put it off for tomorrow, not now, tomorrow...
The challenge comes to all of us... in the midst of the harrowing, compelling tides of life.
Beautiful reflection, this really is!
Posted by: Romuald Dzemo | June 17, 2009 at 01:30 PM