The Next Right Thing

In the last year, I've stood in the shadow of death three times.

In the last year, I’ve stood in the shadow of death three times. Three reminders that the clock is ticking, our days are numbered, that life is short and full of trouble.

One of those deaths happened a couple weeks ago and I’ve floated through it, like I’m hovering above a reality that isn’t real and watching a play in which I’m a character, but not a participant. Saying and hearing the prayers, thinking of all the last times you didn’t know were last times. Most mourning is for us and not the departed, for a future imagined but never realized. The things we planned on doing, the things we promised to do, the things we looked forward to. Now, impossibilities.

But there was another kind of mourning: knowing the beating was coming and I did nothing to prepare for it. In times like these, you want to be the guy who people can count on, who has it under control, who has the strength and the competence to help everyone else get through it.

I had the time, but I didn’t make the effort.

We talk about time like we have plenty of it. We don’t. And the older you get, the faster it goes. You’re barreling toward the grave, whether you realize it or not.

The ancients had a phrase. Memento mori. “Remember you will die.” During victory parades, Roman generals had servants whisper “memento mori” in their ears. The desert monks meditate in bone-filled cellars, skulls painted with phrases like “What you were, I once was. What I am, you will be.”

Most people never think of death. Great men do all the time.

The ancients understood something that our modern world tries to hide. I’m so tired of “Celebrations of Life” instead of funerals. Funerals were the last “remember death” we had, and even those are being twisted into parties that downplay the brutal truth:

Death is not an abstract idea. It is the ONLY certain thing in your future, and in mine. Keeping death in mind changes how you live, buries your excuses. This life is an arena, and the only way you lose is if you stop running.

Plenty of people haven’t even started.

Delaying discipline, procrastinating repentance, jumping from distraction to distraction. Most guys think they will have time to eventually get serious about their health, their family, their faith, their calling. Someday.

There is no someday. The only currency we have is time, what are we spending it on?

Fr. Seraphim Rose said, “It’s later than you think, hasten therefore to do the work of God.”

Later than you think… to become the man you want to be, to build your character, to get stronger in body and soul. Later than you think… to raise your children well, to love your wife, to do honest work, to leave something behind that matters and plenty of people who it matters to.

Men are anesthetized. I was. I am. YouTube videos and endless scrolling and on-demand junk food.

Last night I fell asleep at 18 and woke up at 38.

The years slip by unnoticed. Suddenly you’re halfway done with nothing to show for it.

No more “I’ll start tomorrow.” There is no tomorrow. There is only right now. Another second, another breath, nothing’s guaranteed but this moment.

So we need to get to work. Lift the weight, say the prayer, fix the habit, tell the truth, serve your family. Figure out the next right thing and do it.

Life’s short and full of trouble, but there’s always opportunity in the “right now”. The Thief on the Cross might have wasted his whole life but for one shining moment where all he did was the next right thing.