Wednesday, Ironically, is Anti-Procrastination Day

The Future

For God's sake, be done
with this jabber of "a better world."
What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.

Wendall Berry

Found this poem this morning. Isn't it great? What it says to me is that talking about things isn't going to get us anywhere. If we want a better world, if we want to bring The Kingdom, then we have to do something.

It was particularly apt that I found this today. When I woke up I was very clear about what needed to be accomplished today...some laundry, minutes for Parent Club and a whole mess of typing on my book. It is now after eleven and only one of those items is off the list. Why? Because I've been thinking about doing rather than doing. I've been puttering and putzing. I walked The Dog, which was a good thing. I performed a mitvah for the rabbi's wife (a mitvah is a small kindness...I turned off her ovens for her). That was a good thing. But otherwise I've been messing around with email, reading the paper and yes, I played a computer game.

What is the deal with procrastination? It is so easy to fall into that trap. So easy to neglect what we need to do to keep our little world spinning, even when those things are not particularly onerous or unpleasant. Procrastination is just another way of "jabbering" about "a better world" rather than just getting on with it.

Confession, they say, is good for the soul. So I shall not belabor the point for "The day is clear and bright, and overhead/the sun not yet half finished/with his daily praise".