NOW Is a Good Time to Do It

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Remember the time when you woke up on a Saturday morning and you were so rapturously happy when you realised that today wasn’t a school day, and how you sprang out of bed, ready and eager to lap up every delicious minute of the weekend? Aaah … those far off days. Can’t you almost taste the freshness and eagerness of them? Maybe they’re not so very far off for you. But for some of us, they’re long past. Regardless, you never forget the indescribable sweetness of the long weekend ahead of you, so full of adventures and possibilities.

Saturday morningOf course, you don’t have that feeling on Saturday mornings anymore. Your life is a lot more complicated now, and you have responsibilities. The freshness of life has become a bit stale, a bit jaded. And you plod on, intending to do this and that in the future, but usually, let’s face it, not getting round to it. With all the complications of life, you just don’t seem to find the time.

Well here’s a wake-up call. The time to do things is now. If you want to get fit, do it now. If you want to learn Italian, do it now. If you want to travel the world, do it now. If you want to learn to play chess, or solve the Rubik’s cube, or learn to read sheet music, do it now. If you want to meet someone amazing, do it now. If you want to learn computer programming, do it now. If you want to visit the Grand Canyon, do it now. If you want to swim in the Great Barrier Reef, do it now. Whatever it is that you intend to do, intending alone won’t achieve anything. You must do it now.

Why now?

Why is it so important to do it now? Because there is only now. Every other moment in time is just an illusion. Great teachers and philosophers have been telling us this for thousands of years, and still we cling desperately to the illusion that there is time … time to do things later … to do things ‘one of these days’. Well, the truth is, it’s an illusion and nothing more. It’s a deception of the mind. The brain wants an easy life, and so it convinces you there is plenty of time to do the things you want to do. And, like a fool, you believe it.

You know as well as I do that this could be your last day on this earth. I don’t mean my words to sound pessimistic or doom-laden, but people do die of accidents every day. Somewhere, a person with everything to live for is right now preparing to leave the house, with a mind numbed into a state of laziness and torpor by the deception that there is plenty of time to get things done, and completely unaware that by nightfall his family will be mourning his death. It could be me. It might be you. Whoever it will be, you can be sure it will be someone, somewhere.