I should be getting a piece of paper in the mail pretty soon—a piece of paper that took five years and about fifty thousand dollars to obtain—a piece of paper that says I’ve graduated. Which is ironic because in many ways my life has become less graduated. It’s no longer demarcated by the usual lines of terms beginning and ending, due dates, deadlines, breaks, the ebb and flow of life in school. On one hand, it’s been fantastic to no longer have the burden of schoolwork forever looming like a raincloud over an otherwise perfect day. But as the raincloud evaporated, so did the rainbow promise of a pot of gold at the end of it—the elusive dream of finally getting to all the things that the rain kept postponing: the fifteen or so articles I haven’t had time to write, the ever-growing list of books I’ve always wanted to read, the side project I’ve started but haven’t touched since… the list goes on. Granted, the pot of gold has always been a pipe dream. The princess is always in another castle. The next term is just as busy as the one you finished, and the time you freed up somehow magically disappears.
But now with schoolwork no longer gobbling up my time, I’m free to write and read and learn the things I’ve always wanted to—or so I thought I would be. Though the excuse of too much schoolwork has disappeared, another excuse has taken its place–one that calls itself “tomorrow.” The future has always taunted me with the promise of progress, but this future is an amorphous void of endless tomorrows, having lost the familiar shape and structure that came with school. This void, much like a black hole, expands to fit the ever-growing snowball of things that I roll from day to day, while I proceed to Netflix the night away. It reminds me of the last lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, where he so eloquently describes this struggle:
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
And I think it’s what Tim Urban attempts to get at in his TED talk, “Inside the mind of a master procrastinator.” He starts with an all-too-familiar anecdote of writing a ninety-page term paper in seventy-two hours and follows it with an explanation of the instant gratification monkey and the panic monster—the only thing urgent enough to chase it away. But then Urban goes on to suggest that in the absence of deadlines we can procrastinate forever, letting the days flip by while continuing to cast things large and small into the sea of endless tomorrows.
But it turns out that tomorrow isn’t so endless after all. We’re simply forgetful of the deadline that comes for us all, whether we expect it or not. Earlier this year, I was uncomfortably reminded of this reality by the deaths of three different people, each from different circles of my life. Sooner or later, I think we start to see that the things sitting in the “later” pile don’t just include laundry, books, and home improvement projects, but the really important stuff–friendships, family, telling people about Jesus, forgiving people, actually surrendering to God that thing you’ve been withholding.
For me, it’s been finding church, finding community. I keep telling myself, “Next Sunday,” as I roll over in bed and proceed to sleep well past noon. Sure, there are other excuses: “It might be a cult.” or “The music will be too loud.” or “It won’t be as good as my last church.” All the while, I feel something inside me slowly withering, whether from perpetual disobedience, or my God-given thirst for true, life-giving community. Thankfully, God is patient, and after a few prods in the right direction, mostly from friends who haven’t procrastinated on me, I managed to drag myself to church, albeit ten minutes late, but better than never. Finding church is still a work in progress, but I’m glad I started. It’s not like I have forever. Neither do you.
The call of Jesus is in the tangibles of today, not in the mirages of the endless tomorrows. Will we answer the Lord with a “yes” or a “later,” which turns out to be no more than a thinly disguised “no”?
a cup of kimitea 