Procrastination

Procrastination looks like a failure of will but is in fact an emotional and physical mechanism to cope with two imposing forces: On one side is the hubris that what one's going to do is so great that it cannot be done in a less-than-ideal environment but must await the ever-receding best starting point; on the other is the unacknowledged depression that is quick to enjoy but slow to accept a routine job done superbly, such as a just comment on a student's paper, an appropriate administrative email, a sweet gesture to please an acquaintance. The mechanism is modern in the sense that it comes with the invention of the linear time that hinges the meaning of life on the future, on the seemingly common sense that the distant is nurturing a new thing, a new relation, a new self. In other words, what is at stake is the modern idea of hope. Back in the village, when things come and go in a day-night and then seasonal cycle, what matters is what is at hand. What's going down with the wheel can be brought up again; there is not yet an outside where one can be dropped. Whoever invents this outside is talented but doomed, doomed to run continually away from the shadow of the past--with the only salvation loomed in the illusion of the future.