Hodie, non cras!
Procrastination
When I was a youth minister, I took a group of my students
to a nearby Catholic youth camp, called Catholic Youth Expeditions. This
organization was started by a priest of the diocese of Green Bay who was
inspired by John Paul II’s outdoor
adventures with a group of young adults in Poland who became his friends and
inspired many of his greatest works. This camp was geared at teens and young
adults, and run for the most part by college age students who volunteered their
summers to grow closer to Christ. One of the years I attended, the theme of the
summer was ‘Hodie, non Cras,’ which
is Latin for ‘Today, not tomorrow!’—and
this theme was proudly yelled every few hours by different members of the
staff, which delighted the teenagers (who doesn’t love being encouraged to yell
at the top of your lungs?), who soon picked it up. Needless to say, this theme
has stuck with me.
Most recently, this theme has come into my head with
beginning to blog again. I have a million excuses in my head for why I haven’t
started until now, most of which are just stupid: ranging from, ‘I don’t have
anything to say’ to ‘I don’t have time’ to ‘no one wants to read what I write.’
What I’ve had to realize is that in the end, these things are either not true
or they don’t matter. For some reason, God will not let this idea die from my
brain…
With all of these excuses, I’ve had the chance to analyze
(to death), why I feel like God is calling me to blog. At first, I tried to
tell myself that a desire to blog is just a misplaced desire to feel important-
a call to others to ‘listen to me, because I know so much!’ And to a certain
extent, I’ll admit, this is part of it. This is something I need to work on,
but it’s also not the main reason this idea won’t die.
Instead, I’ve come to realize that much more than that, I
need to blog in order to force myself to think deeply, and to hold myself
accountable spiritually. For, as much as I love my 3 month old, he needs my
body and presence a lot more than he needs my intellectual gifts at this time
in his life (more on that later). And while journaling works for this to a
certain extent, I am not disciplined enough to maintain this depth without some
sort of audience (even if it is only a mental perception- or the chance that
someone could read it). For whatever reason, that’s the way my brain works.
Sadly, it seems that C.S. Lewis is right in the Screwtape Letters-- the devil does not
manifest himself openly, but rather works through more subtle means. In my
life, this means distraction (I can’t write now, I HAVE to plan my week, or go
on facebook, or…) and procrastination (I have too much to do today, but it’s on
my list for tomorrow…). The sad thing is, often I realize this, and still allow
myself to be distracted. But today, not tomorrow, I am starting- and though
this is nothing very deep or profound (how many people have observed this
before me…), it is a beginning: and that’s
farther than I was yesterday.