Sometimes it’s time to pull up our socks. Enough dawdling, loafing, diddle-daddling, goofing off, lollygagging, etc. A superabundance of cliches reflects the prevalence of a condition. Grownups no less than tots seek to flail with words (“you, you meanie, you!”).

I am a criminal procrastinator. Just ask Jane. The more I have to do anything the more ways I find not to. Ben Franklin is right, of course – “Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today” – but screw him. I can tussle with the simplest chore – shelving a book, say, the matter of a minute – till my bedside stack teeters. I anticipate this minor mishap – and my subsequent self-rebuke – how easily I could forestall it – so why don’t I? Tots sometimes clench their poop till it’s painful, just for – what? – the “hell of it”?

I’m guessing such tugs-of-war are more typical than we’d know from talk. They’re embarrassing, these wrangles with oneself over piddling differences. It’s not as if we had weighty concerns at stake – to shelve or not to shelve! Of course I must shelve – before topple-down day – any blockhead knows that! My resistance is pro-forma – and never-ending: Who’s the boss of me – duty or desire, will or instinct? Am I compliant or defiant? Tell me I must and my jaw juts, “Gonna make me?”

The idea of free will has bedeviled humans at least since Eden. Eve, in the story, wasn’t thirsting for knowledge from that tree of good and evil; she was pissed at the prohibition. If the fruit was dangling, she would eat it, dammit; the serpent beguiled her by taunting her subservience.

Not just humans tug their leashes. My pal Henry does – literally. He delights in not coming when I need him to, darting and bouncing, evading capture, even foregoing treats. Being “his own man” is too much fun to surrender. He knows he must – wants to, in a way – no outlaw canine he – he’ll go with the flow – eventually – but not quite yet – this dream of autonomy is too dog-gone sweet!

Henry’s master is real – and getting grumpy: enough already, damn you! My master – and maybe yours – is fantastic. I imagine my necessity, then resist the impositions of my delusion.

I tell myself, for example, I must compose a missive. Why must I? Because readers are waiting? Because I’ve been doing this daily for more than a decade? Because I’ve urgent news to impart? Yes and no. Granted the pecuniary compensation is squat, I treat this as my work, purpose, commitment, because… I wouldn’t exist if I didn’t. I’d just be another molecule, not a molecule with éclat!

Humans, more than other creatures, need to believe we matter. We are not “chopped liver.” Our stories count for something, however implausible that claim. “That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions,” sighed Santayana, in what may be my favorite sentence ever.

Without you reading my words I would die – that is my craziness. This is my mission, let me at it! And yet – mind you – I’m no slave. I choose to make these missives, I’m not forced to. These are gifts, not dues.

We feel born to serve some necessity larger than ourselves – and to defy that sentence: to be a part and apart: your obedient servant and resistant contestant. We can’t stop cross-examining ourselves. “To be or not to be” – what other creature wrestles such a hare-brained dilemma! Procrastination is a skirmish in our battle for significance – a battle we must lose – but oh, how grand the grapple!!