A Christian's Habits: Chapter Nine
The Habit of Doing Things Now.
“The kind of life we are living is producing the sort we shall live forever. We may well believe that death brings a mighty change, but it is a change of sphere and of condition, not of character. ”
This book isn’t the most influential book in my spiritual journey. Robert E. Speer was an American as I am, a Presbyterian as I am, and lived in the late modern period of history as I do. Yet it is a Frenchman, a Catholic priest working with nuns, in the early modern period (the 17th century), who wrote a book that has been more influential in my American, Presbyterian, 21st-century life. This may seem unusual but it’s to be expected when you seek to follow Jesus. He leads us on a journey across space and time to arrive at our destination.
This may seem like a far out idea. But it’s focused on one simple truth. There is one thing that binds all humans together whether living in the time of Father De Caussade, in the context of Rev. Robert E. Speer, or in the same general situation of Rev. Randy Lovejoy; the only time we are alive is now and the journey with Jesus is neither more nor less about taking the next step; that is, we look at where we are today, we do what is in front of us, and we trust that God is leading us, step by step and moment by moment to the place we need to go. That’s the theme of the De Caussade’s book “The Sacrament of the Present Moment.” That’s the lesson of this particular chapter of Speer’s book. Though separated by space and time they share the wisdom of Garth when he urged Wayne to “live in the now!”1 This, in my mind, is the most important and most practical habit of a life that makesgoodhappen.
So, without further ado, chapter nine of Robert Speer’s “A Christian’s Habits,” The Habit of Doing Things Now.
I. Preparing for Eternity
How can you practice today what you will be doing forever?
In his book entitled “The Happy Life,” ex-President Eliot of Harvard quotes the question of Emerson, asking what use immortality would be to a man who does not know how to live half an hour. Immortality, in the popular view, is just an endless number of half hours tied together, one after the other. What would a man do with a million of them who did not know what to do with one? And of what use to anyone will be a great, long-dreamed-of opportunity for heroism or service, unless preparation has been made for it by such heroism and service in the things that went before? All of these questions only bring out clearly the true principle of life; namely, that living now is the only living, that we ought to use rightly each moment and fill it full of true work and duty-doing.
This is the only sensible and workable principle. Any other is impossible. You cannot speak two words at the same time and you cannot do two acts, each requiring the whole personality, at once. There is no way in which we can pull back into the present an hour that is past, to do its work over again, and there is no way in which we can draw down into the present an hour out of the future, in order to live it right now. Living now is the only living. Thinking of the past life or of life to come is not living. The chance to live goes by while we are thinking about it. We cannot break off an immense achievement and do it at any one given time. We can only live one moment at a time and do at one time the work that can be put in one moment. Life ceases to be such a complicated and impractical thing when we realize this and are willing to live moment by moment.
“Nine tenths of the wretchedness of our lives does not spring from the present. It springs from brooding over the past and the things in the past which are beyond recall, or it comes from apprehensions about the future, most of which never arrive.”
It is vitally important that we should realize that the law of life is living now. The kind of life we are living is producing the sort we shall live forever. We may well believe that death brings a mighty change, but it is a change of sphere and of condition, not of character. We shall be what we are. The kind of things we do now and the way we do them now will not suddenly undergo a change. We shall keep right on. The boy or girl who is now negligent and shiftless and untruthful is likely to go on living so in the future. If any boy or girl is prompt, alert, faithful now, the habit of using life for living, of doing things in the only time we ever have to do them in, namely, now, will get so established that the boy or girl will go right on, really living always.
II. Making Good Happen
How have you built expertise in your life, suddenly or over time?
And this plan is the restful one. It saves us from the dread, the paralyzing intimidation and surrender of the soul on account of life’s bigness. We realize that we do not have to live our years all at once, that all that we have to do is the one thing that we can do, merely live our lives a bit at a time. And so we save ourselves also from the miseries of memory and the terrors of our imagination of the future by the simple plea of being absorbed in present duty. Nine tenths of the wretchedness of our lives does not spring from the present. It springs from brooding over the past and the things in the past which are beyond recall, or it comes from apprehensions about the future, most of which never arrive. In other words, we lose our lives in thinking of how we did live or failed to live in the past, or how we will live in the future. But this is missing the chance to live, and so we die under the thoughts of life. This is why life grows so uneasy and fretful. Let us all stop this and spend each moment in really living.
“the results…are dependent upon on the circumstances and materials in the midst of which his life fell.”
By doing this we acquire power for future living. Lamentation about the quality of our past living or great purposes about future living will only weaken us unless they are expressed in a better and firmer quality of present living. And if we get into the habit of living strongly now we shall live that way hereafter without thinking about it. If we do the things that ought to be done now, we shall do them then. The great authorities in any department are the men who grew into authority gradually. They did what each moment brought to them, and so, after a while, no moment brought to them anything which they could not do. The world soon found out, and straightway began to bring everything in their line to them. “We become authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres,” writes on who was himself an authority, an expert, “by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, among the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away.”2
In this way also life achieves results. National greatness is a product of slow education, not great efforts. Germany and the United States and Japan have forged ahead of other nations as they have, not because of national energy or of any sudden effort, but as the result of a careful and thorough public-school system which has trained people. No emergency effort on the part of other nations can offset this advantage. They will have to begin now where we began years ago and do some living in the present, instead of spending time dreaming of the past or of the future. And with individuals as with nations, results are sums in arithmetic. The big, personal tasks, whether in character or in work, are not done wholesale, but are built up piece by piece, just as the little coral insects build the reefs or the ants their huge mounds. “Do things now,” is the way to get many and great things done.
III. Deepening the Habit
How do you measure the success of your life?
But while this principle is the key to the achievement of great results, it is not the greatness of results which is of significance, but the spirit and purpose and the process which produced them. A political writer has recently compared Gladstone, Bismark and Cavour to the disadvantage of Gladstone on the grounds that he erected no new state as each of the others did. But the results of a man’s work are dependent upon the circumstances and materials in the midst of which his life fell. Not what it added up to, but how he lived it, how faithfully, persistently, unselfishly, is the great questions regarding each life. What was the quality and intentness of his living?
In practicing this principle of “Do it now,” which was Dr. Babcock’s motto, the rule of “Living now the only living,” there are two things that will help.
One is, of two duties always do the harder one first. Do not substitute an easier thing for a hard one.
And the other is check all unreal daydreams. Don’t live in the past. Don’t live in the future.
Thinking backward and forward is necessary, but now is the living time, and we have memory and imagination that by them we may learn the lessons of the past and draw upon the inspiration of the future for the needs of present living.
This was the method of Jesus. His life seems at times almost to have had no plan. He stopped to spend hours with any inquiring heart. He was impatient at no interruption. He seized each moment’s opportunity for living purposes. He put out his life incessantly. He actually lived. And God unrolled the wonderful drama of his life. He did, moment by moment, his Father’s will. “While it is day,” was his motto. Therefore he was at rest. “The Father…hath not left me alone; for I do always the things that are pleasing to him.” This should be our law and our life.
Are you in earnest?
Seize this very minute.
What you can do
Or think you can begin it. 3
James, William, “Habit,” Principles of Psychology, Vol I., reprinted in “The Heart of William James,” ed. by Robert Richardson, [Cambrige, Mass. Harvard University Press, 2012} p. 114.