As a wee lad, my wonderful grandparents lavishing me, as well as my brothers, with loads of candy for Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. I especially loved the chocolate.
So, being the brilliant kid that I was, I saved it. While my brothers, and even my parents, gobbled down most of the candy, I’d stow mine away. For like a year.
And… that was a mistake. More than once, I returned to my chocolate only to find that it had either been eaten by someone else or had turned to dust.
Speaking of dust, let me share another story…
Turning again to my wee lad days, a friend and I back then loved throwing handfuls of dust into the air. We’d gather it from around the volleyball net in our apartment courtyard and then pretend we were blowing stuff up with the explosion-like dust clouds. All really harmless. :>)
Anyway, one day, my friend and I got the bright idea to save up a bunch of dust to create a huge, swirling storm. I volunteered my wagon, and for two or three weeks, we stockpiled dust each day.
Until it rained.
The day after, we realized all our dust had turned to globs. We could barely dig it out of the wagon at all much less create any kind of cloud.
So that’s why I’m skeptical of delayed gratification.
- Because we know more about now than later.
- Because predicting the future is difficult.
- Because situations usually change.
Because…
