Delayed Ramification

It’s amazing how easily – and willfully – we will jeopardize our future by choices we make in the present.  Consequences/schmonsequences be damned!  Anything that doesn’t overtly upset an apple cart or change the rotation of the earth is probably fair game.  Besides, there’s always tomorrow to make up the difference.  And there are always excuses and explanations to be offered – or perhaps someone else to blame!  Or we might be able to pawn it off on someone else to do.  And there’s always a chance that the statute of limitations on IOUs will eventually run out. 

It’s equally amazing how resignedly we accept the fruits of past choices.  Perhaps our “saving grace” is our adaptability to less than ideal circumstances … which we are wont to create for ourselves!  Of course, we don’t do it without fair warning from our mothers: 

“You make your bed, you sleep in it!” 

The willingness to accept our own Fate is graphically illustrated in the book “Working” by Studs Turkel (The New Press, New York 1974) – but, often, it’s our only bridge to sanity late in the game: 

“When I got out of high school, I didn’t want no secretary job.  I wanted the grocery job.  It was so interesting for a young girl.  I just fell into it.  I don’t know no other work but this.  It’s hard work, but I like it.  This is my life.”    Babe Secoli (p. 282) 

However, regret over past laxity and poor choices tends to creep in. 

“You always have the idea that you’re gonna better yourself.  You think ‘Gee, I wonder if I could write a book’ or just exactly what I could do.  I think I could have done a lot better … “  Doc Pritchard, Room Clerk in a Manhattan hotel (Working, p. 250) 

Let’s take a closer look at “The Problem With Now”: 

The problem with NOW … is that it just happens to fall in between everything else. 

It lies between rising and retiring ... 

            … Between meals …

            … Between phone calls ...

            … Between projects …

            … Between crises ...

            … Between cups of coffee ...

            … Between … well, everything except NOW! 

And more often than we would care to admit or have brought to our attention, we treat it as a “coasting” period … something just to be filled by “BEING” before the next “happening” or other intervention on our radar.  Anything not pressing or distressing can wait an indeterminate time – or at least for NOW – until it becomes so. 

So it’s no big deal.  We’ve been here before … just us, and here, and NOW. 

But NOW is the most important time of life NOW!  To BE, and to DO. 

And, ready or not, NOW moves quickly into NEXT.  The way we control NEXT is to do now NOW … to stay on track with our GRAND PLAN and keep planting the seeds for the future NOW ... putting up the framework, nailing down the shingles, and moving the PLAN forward.

So we need to develop a refined SENSE OF URGENCY about NOW:

NOW is the best time to create opportunity; NOW is the best time to increase capacity; NOW is the best time to defuse challenge; and NOW is the very best time to do whatever will become “pressing” or “distressing” first next. 

Whatever we do NOW will almost certainly have Delayed Ramifications, one way or the other.  Let’s make them as POSITIVE as possible and turn some of that Immediate Gratification/ Delayed Ramification rain into some spectacular Delayed Gratification/Positive Ramification sunshine!  Quartermaster