This strange title for a blog came to my mind as I was trimming the trees in my backyard and dragging the efforts of my labors down to the fire pit for burning at a later stage.
Whilst I was tearing away at the foliage my wife was on hands and knees diligently weeding out all the stinging nettles that are sprouting up all over our lawn making it not all attractive to look at. The trouble being that as I mow the lawn it spreads the seeds of these nettles encouraging them to spread even further. Not a pretty site.
Our house is beautiful and is my semi-retirement home sitting on the lake in Port Perry, Canada. It is my dream home and with all the work that we have done is stunning, to say the least. My wife is a genius when it comes to construction work, she can do it all, and gets it done right first time. Me? I put a shelf up, open a window and guaranteed the draft will blow it down. So I make the beds and do the cooking (some of it).
So here we are today, out in the heat, working on our garden doing something that we should have done months, if not years ago. We have a lot to do, it’s going to take a lot of hard work and graft to get it looking right. It’s not just a few hours work, it’s going to be days if not a couple of weeks. Blisters, dirty finger nails. Muddy sweat running down our cheeks, and aching bones at the end of the day.
So why are we putting ourselves through all this pain? Why now. Because we want to sell our home, well not want to but have to due to my wife’s work. (That’s another story). So why now and not “then”,” then” being earlier than now. “Then” being weeks before, or months before, or better still when it NEEDED to be done. Yes we would of course sit out on the deck watching the sunsets and see the weeds growing, We knew that they needed dealing with, but we could always get round to it later. As I cut the lawn I knew that I was cutting the heads off the weeds which in a way hid the weeds and took them out of my minds eye – I could deal with them later. But there was always something else that got in the way of our dealing with the weeds.
There were Bar-B-Q’s, parties, meetings, TV shows, excuses and even more excuses – all of them good reasons for not dealing with the weeds. Had we dealt with the problem “then” it would have taken only minutes each day, but now it’s taking hours each day.
So why NOW and not THEN. We have new motivation, we want to sell our home and have to everything possible to encourage someone to want to buy our home, make a decision.
This dilemma of now and then faces us in all our lives, putting off until tomorrow what can be done today. We very often delay business decisions because we are too busy and then we suffer later due to inactivity – filing of taxes, hiring/firing staff/servicing/staff training/purchasing/marketing. We also very often delay making decisions that affect our family lives – addressing internal conflicts/keeping in touch with distant love ones/taking time to listen to and hearing our children.
We are all continually being bombarded with daily decisions and if we were to deal with them, face them as they arose then life would be oh so much better. I was always taught to start the day with the most difficult and arduous task and finish the day with the easiest and simplest, that way the day finishes on a high note.
So guess what. From now on my garden will be weeded on a daily basis. D.I.N is my new motto – DO IT NOW why not make it yours as well.
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