My friend an I once played many games of Yahtzee.   We passed evenings listening to music, and played game, after game after game.

It was competitive, relaxing, and fun to enjoy each others company, and to see how chance affected our rolls.

During one of these games, I remarked on her multiple, unsuccessful attempts to score on a particularly challenging item, the large straight.  I hadn’t made the comment to goad her, I hadn’t intended to vex, nor did it appear that she took my words in such a way.  Unfazed, unrattled, and confident, she responded with three simple words.

“In due time.”

We all have a sense of what this simple phrase means.  We often associate its use with the hope of a challenge passing, or a difficult situation resolving, or of pain abating.  We find ourselves angry at someone’s action, or become upset at ourselves, and do not care for those emotions.  We lose something, or someone, and feel incomplete without it.  Some sort of tragedy occurs, and we anguish as a result of its effects.   We cannot make sense of our circumstances, so we emotionally propel ourselves to a point in the distance.  We say,

“In due time.”

We associate our happiness with a point in the future.  We say to ourselves that we have no control over our internal make up, and believe that our negative feelings will fade as calendar pages turn.  We chose to smother our pain, anger, and sadness, with sand from the hourglass, with the belief that once we turn the timepiece around, those feeling will simply vanish.  We bank on three simple words,

“In due time.”

But we need not wait.  Time does not determine our happiness, we do.  Choosing to wait, is still a choice.  Believing that doing nothing will help resolve our emotions and feelings, is still a choice.  Allowing those negative feelings to overwhelm us, is a choice.

Famously attributed to Marcus Aurelius is a quote,

“You could be happy today, but instead choose tomorrow.”

Say to yourself no more, “In due time”  Instead, simply say

“Now.”

Humbly yours,

J