The following meditation, “The Temptation to Postpone,” comes from Thurman’s The Inward Journey.
The temptation to postpone living until some future time is very subtle — that is, to postpone living significantly. Such a temptation is apt to present itself at any time and to any person. There is the person who says, “When my ship comes in . . .” or “ When my luck changes . . .” or “When I get a certain job, then I’ll come into my own and begin to live.” When we are a very young, we are apt to think that all our youth is but preliminary to the real business of living. Of course this is true but not altogether. In terms of vocational preparation or in terms of certain broad social responsibilities that are the inevitable accompaniment to adulthood, such is the case. Sometimes because of a sudden or radical reversal in circumstances, an individual may suspend all meaningful life, devoting his time and energy completely to the rugged business of recouping his position or fashioning an immediate technique of survival. Everything has to wait until the situation is in hand and normalcy is restored. Sometimes everything is held up because of a decision which someone else must make, and for a short or long interval life hangs in the balance. At such a time no plans can be made, no decisions determined; waiting, waiting, waiting — this seems to be all that can be managed.
Nevertheless, to postpone living significantly in the present is a serious blunder. Life does not stop being life because we are experiencing reverses or because we are young or because we are preparing ourselves vocationally or because certain important decisions that are in the hands of others have not been made. All of this is to give a purely quantitative character to life to measure it exclusively in terms of the episode, the event, the circumstance. It is important to cultivate a “feeling for significance” in living and thus to give the quality of aliveness to the experience of living moment by moment. This means seeking ever for fullness, keenness, and zest as the open sesame to experienced life in the living of life. What is lived deeply is securely one’s own and nothing can ever take it away — neither circumstance, nor age nor even Death itself.
The life that I have lived,
so full, so keen,
Is mine! I hold it firm
beneath thy {Death} blow
And, dying, take it with me
where I go.