Day 542: Procrastination Is an Egg

Day 542: 18 September 2022, Sunday

What is procrastination? It is too simple to say it is complex, dynamic, and beautifully horrible. First, in experience, there is a fear of the unknown, the glance across the table, toward the Other side, the worrisome sense that error and discontent will terrorize one throughout the departure from the security of fixedness, of stagnation, Then, there is the face of fear, something so terrible and horrifying that few children learn to forget, the empty, void space between here and there, the image of the process of the activity itself, into which only the courageous may embark, ones who love in some way the act, the play of it. 

Like a kiss through the bars of a prison cell, this love steels itself and embraces immanent danger in the name of the beloved, the Other. In a way, only this love can pass. It is movement, the awareness embodied in action. 

Procrastination is also the beast that seeks to escape the grasp of its time and eternity; it is that nagging, growling thing of potential, a captive yearning for power in freedom. It has none outside of its cage of projection. Where is it projected? Out there or in here? Do not dwell here, procrastinator. It takes courage to embark into the unknown. It is not easy to die and be reborn into something new. 

Procrastination desires to be loved, to be nurtured out of its infantile state. Like an egg, it is a field of intensities, traversed by gradients of activity and personality. Procrastination craves the warmth of a body, the auspicious attention to its curved and differentiated surface. Find what is loved in it. 

But an egg can be broken open. Is that what we should do? Or hatch it, liberate it through diligent care? Find what is loved in it. To put off? Or put on (hold)? Both are, in their own ways, animals in a cage. You can’t coax a wild animal out with force of will alone. One must evoke the will of the Other. Find what is loved in it. Actualize potential. Procrastinating? Turn your enjoyment into an activity, the activity, for the sake of what is loved. Look for truth, not consistency. The latter will come with time, the former is eternal. 

One thing to understand about love is that it needs a sense of fearlessness. Without fear, it dissolves hope, too. Fear and hope are two sides of the same coin. To love truly is to know, beyond will or idea, that your love will be the same wherever it finds the beloved, as one knows the ground to meet one’s feet with every step. There is no hope here, nor fear. Only loving awareness. 

‘Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.’ 

Socrates

‘All that is necessary is to look into one’s own heart; for what God asks of us is not found at a great distance.’ 

St. Jerome

‘Love is infallible. It has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.’ 

William Law

Procrastination is the ‘error,’ the break in our activity. Fear obliterates the will and dulls the senses. To find what is loved in it, whatever it is, is to extricate one’s fear, and subsequently one’s hope, of the inevitable. What is inevitable is the overcoming of procrastination: this is the dream, the wish. To make it come true, to make one’s own luck, is to embark into the unknown. Pick a point of departure and don’t just stand there, do it, whatever it is. 

A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. 

‘Freedom is not guided by our efforts; it comes from seeing what is true.’ 

Buddha