Yesterday I wrote about my failure to enjoy the process of preparing for an event in the future. Today I want to look at another mistake that I often make: failing to prepare adequately for that future because of procrastination. I don’t think there’s ever been a meal or reception I’ve prepared that included everything I’d planned. At some point of the procedures I realize that there’s no way I can get everything done and so something gets cut. Usually it’s not a problem, but I have to say that it probably would have been good to include the breadsticks in Tuesday’s dinner. I tend to vastly underestimate how long it will take to prepare the menu. I think I have plenty of time when I don’t. The future has arrived, and I’m not ready.
I recently read (most of) a very funny, perceptive book titled Homer Economicus: Using the Simpsons to Teach Economics, a collection of essays edited by Joshua Hall, an economics professor. (I’ve never actually seen more than brief clips of the TV show but enjoyed the book just the same.) Hall discovered in his classroom that examples from the show’s stories were good teaching tools because there were many situations, especially involving Homer, that involved basic economics. I was particularly struck with the fact that Homer has a hard time realizing that the future will become the present. So he takes out a loan in one episode and then is outraged when he realizes that he has to pay it back. How can that possibly be? The loan was for the future.
It’s easy to laugh at poor old Homer, I guess, but the problem is that most of us make that same mistake. (I could have included an image of him for my illustration as there’s a website that offers free Simpsons pictures, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. He’s so . . . unattractive.) I say that I’ll do something, or make something, even if I’m just saying it to myself, without fully taking in that at some point I’ll actually have to go ahead and fulfill that promise. You might say that I’m better in the daydreaming stage than in the execution stage. Boy, am I good at coming up with menus! I lie in bed thinking about what to serve at an upcoming meal. But then I have to actually do it. And suddenly that complicated casserole or pastry doesn’t look quite as attractive as it did when it was just a picture in my head.
So, as Memorial Day weekend looms, I have two food-related events to prepared for: a lunch for the youth group on Sunday and a cookout on Monday. At this point I don’t even know for sure what I’m going to make for either one. Maybe I’d better quit writing and get busy on figuring it out. And then figuring out a schedule for getting everything done. And then actually following the schedule. Wishful thinking won’t get me anywhere.
Do you have a tendency to forget that the future is always becoming the present? That tomorrow always becomes today? How astoundingly obvious–and astoundingly overlooked.