The Critical Hour

Gentlemen,

Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

“One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

Mr. Ralph is correct. This is the critical hour; today is the decisive day.

God has gifted you and I with another day on this earth, another breath to draw, another step to take, another moment to be grateful for… How wonderful?!

The irony is that we are all well aware of our fragile mortality, yet act as if we will live forever. We know that there is ZERO guarantee of tomorrow or even of making it to dinner tonight. We know God will take us home when he pleases, yet we act as though this is not the case.

Self-delusion

Who has thrown a day, an hour, a conversation, or a single breathe frivolously away as if you knew for certain it would not be your last? Each one of us has. We’ve all forsaken ourselves and arrogantly denied God’s gift at some point or another.

Emerson knew we humans have a tendency to forget that today, the very day you’re reading and I’m writing this, could be our last. He knew we often delude ourselves into thinking this is not our critical hour and that destiny is not at play at this very moment, but why do we do this?

We do so to protect ourselves from the increased effort we would put forth if we knew it really was the best or last day of our life. We know, deep down, that there is vast resources yet to be tapped into and the cost of utilizing those resources is effort. We know there is an army of energy, vitality, virility, and focus that would be deployed if we knew it was our last day, however, it’s much easier to keep that army at bay. Many would rather leave that fighting force dormant than to unleash it and do the required work to tame it.

Not me and I would hope not you. I hope to die with a dead battery. I hope, at the end of my life, however long God decides it to be, that I have earned my rest.

I believe this is why Emerson implored us to “Write it on our hearts that every day is the best day in the year.” He was begging us to act with this in mind.

The Best Day

What would today look like if you acted with that script written on your heart? If you truly believed today was the best day of your life, what would you do? What would you create and how would you go about creating it? What energy would you live with? What would you do and who would you do it with?

You surely wouldn’t suck down social media like a zombie or accept invitations to events you didn’t want to go to. If you knew for a fact that today was the best or last day of your life, you would live as intentional of a day as was ever lived. You would not waste time, you would say no to things that did not interest you, you would say yes to that which did, you would not be so easily pulled into blackholes of mindless consumption of media or food, you would be kinder to loved ones, you’d hug a little longer and you wouldn’t withdraw your handshake so quickly… You would live intentionally.

Finite

God’s gift to us is finite. We only have so much time on Earth and it’s implorations such as Emerson’s that remind us of this fact.

Today is the day my friends. Destiny is playing out as you read this, it’s up to you and I how we play along.

Onward & Upward,

Nolan

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