Start Making Hay Now, Because the Sun Won’t Always be Shining

“Whan the sunne shinth make hay. Whiche is to say.
Take time whan time cometh, lest time steale away.”

                                                                 ~ John Heywood, 1546 AD

Wisdom has no expiration date.

Most of the time I spend trying to be a better father, husband, and author boils down to me discovering the hard-earned wisdom of lives already lived.  It’s humbling to learn just how little I actually know about any particular subject when I start digging into it, but learning is living, and I am grateful to be alive.  Mostly.

What I am grateful for is my boss and his addiction to throwing out quotes in our meetings.  He sprang this one on me recently:  Make hay while the sun is shining.

The saying (proverb, really) bounced around in my head for days after hearing it, as meaningful passages often do.  After I shared my fascination with what I had heard on Twitter and did some etymological research, I began to realize why the saying kept bouncing around in my thoughts.  I’d find myself saying it at work, or during my morning ritual with the tiny one. 

Make hay while the sun is shining.  

Last night, as I sat in my chair doing a whole lot of things which weren’t writing, I finally realized what my mind had been chewing on this whole time: This is something I don’t do.  

It’s been the biggest challenge of my writing career.  One could argue it’s been the biggest challenge of my entire life.

I am almost categorically incapable of doing things until the last minute.

There I was, quiet house, caffeine at my side, blank post open before me.  These are the conditions I require most to write, as I’ve discussed before. The sun had set outside, yet it was shining bright across the field of my hopes and dreams.  And what was I doing with this beautiful moment?

I was watching a rather irate German in his early twenties rant about a game I love while he systematically demolished it at blistering speed.

If you heard a popping sound late last night, do not be alarmed, it was just me rocketing my palm into my face.

The deep irony of trying to write a post about a saying whose very meaning is to quit with all the dilly-dallying and get to work while engrossed in quite a lot of dillying and no small measure of dallying is not lost upon me. 

I was surprised by my reaction to this acknowledgement of my current failures.  Let’s face it, while I’ve got an abundance of experience in dunking on myself when I’m depressed, engaging a character defect in a dispassionate and rational way, armed only with wry amusement and a determination to improve, is foreign territory for me.  

This clarity of purpose is also why I chose to forge ahead with the post despite my deficiencies with the source material; This is important, and not just to me.

The lessons this proverb has to teach us extend far past farming or writing.  As I’ve written and rewritten these words, I’ve had time to reflect upon the fact that most, if not all, of my worries in life are due to the fact that I have been employing a weaponized do-it-tomorrow attitude with everything. 

The sun is shining, but I’m wasting the only daylight I’ll ever have.

Life and opportunities are not infinite.  This last December I lost my mother, and my father wrecked his own health upon the reef of caring for my mother as she died.  I’m not going to have him for much longer either.  My tiny human is 10 short months away from beginning his K-12 education, and by the time my Spanish is up to scratch for the bilingual school we’re enrolling him in, it’ll be time to drop him off for his first day.

I think I’ve done enough gallivanting about.  

Last night was a wake-up call.  I cannot continue as I have been and express surprise and dismay that my hayloft is empty.  The task of writing never changes; it is labor, pure and simple, from the start of your career to the last word you ever write.  Life is no different, for everything worth doing is paid for with effort. 

There exist two choices for all of us moving forward: Make hay while the sun is shining, or find that when the night has come we’ve nothing to show for the day that has passed.  

I’m sick and tired of having nothing to show for my efforts and I am certain I am not alone in feeling that way.

So let’s roll up our sleeves, don our favorite hats, and quit wasting the daylight of our lives.

Shinefully,

The Unsheathed Quill