Sense of Urgency??

The following story illustrates dramatically the consequences of failing to develop a sense of urgency.

One day a man was sitting in his small boat on the Niagara River. The waters were calm, the breeze was gentle, and the sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky. Only moments before, the man had pushed his from the riverbank, and even now the shore was only a few feet away. Clearly, there was no cause for concern. As he baited his hook and cast his line into the water, his mind began to drift.

And so did his small boat. The movement was slow and imperceptible in the beginning, with the boat doing what any boat will do when left to drift along with the gentle current. But all drifts are leading toward an eventual destination, and left uncorrected will move toward that destination as though by some strange and unseen force.In his preoccupations of the moment, the man did not notice the increased movement of his boat. His thoughts were still on fishing as they had been all week in anticipation of this outing. There would be plenty of time for seriousness. For a little while at least, he would continue to relax and enjoy himself. He would ignore the challenges of life and use this hour to allow himself to drift.

Without warning, his thoughts were shaken from wherever they had wandered, back to the present. The sound seemed to come from nowhere, distant at first, but in the twinkling of an eye, it had intensified and was now almost deafening. His attention was seized not only by the sound, but by the movement, for his small boat was being propelled through waters that were no longer gentle and calming.

He looked around him and for the first time he noticed the river banks on either side had retreated as though on a journey of their own. He had no motor on his small boat and had journeyed forth with only a single paddle. There had been no apparent need for a motor or oars.

He struggled to comprehend what was happening, for it was as though he had moved from the calmness, the serenity, and the safety of one environment into the frenzied turbulence of circumstances beyond his ability to grasp or control.In an instant the reality of his circumstances registered clearly.

The thundering sound, the rising foam, the swirling mist, and the uncontrolled momentum of his boat created an instant picture of his horrid circumstances. He had cast himself and his small boat onto the Niagara River, and his drift had brought him to the threshold of the falls.His mind flashed a collage of thoughts and emotions. If only he had thought about the consequences of his drift. If only he had been better prepared and had thought to equip his boat with a motor, just in case. If only he had noticed sooner, or if only...

Only now did the man notice the crowd that had gathered along the far banks on either side, as the word quickly spread about the boat cascading down the river toward irreversible disaster. It was as though those who knew what was about to happen were wanting to help, but to make any attempt to rescue this hopeless creature would serve only to jeopardize their own safety. Some made futile efforts to toss ropes or to hold out tree branches, but most stood in stunned silence, witnesses to a tragedy that need not have happened.

In a fleeting moment he felt the impending doom of his own personal neglect. He was a victim of his own preoccupation -- of his careless inattention to detail in an environment that had the capacity to swallow up his existence, his opportunities and his abilities, and to put all of his dreams to an end in one brief moment.His one final thought was what he would do differently if only he had a second chance. His thoughts rushed through his mind with the same rapidity as the water passing over the edge of falls, tumbling to their final destination hundreds of feet below.

Had he been given the gift of a second chance he would have allowed himself to see the possible future disaster well in advance. He would have seen it clearly in his mind before the event took place in reality. He would have anticipated the certain consequences of neglect. In his mind’s eye, he would have seen the rising foam, heard the roar of the falls and sensed his accelerated drift so that he might have acted without delay to move quickly to the safety of the shore.

If he could have been plucked from the waters instead of being consumed by them, he would have placed new value upon his talent, his opportunities and his time. He would not have allowed frivolity to capture his attention nor would he have permitted his desire for rest and relaxation to take his focus off the greater need for intense labor and measurable progress.But unfortunately, he simply ran out of time.Examining Our Current DriftAnd so it is with our lives. We are all drifting in some direction even at this very moment. The only thing we can determine with any degree of accuracy is where our current drift may be taking us.

The big unknown is whether there are still enough ticks left on our personal clocks to changeFor some people, their past deeds have charted a course which threatens to imprison their future, and yet they do not take corrective and immediate action. They allow the drift of neglect to continue unabated. They permit their desire for entertainment to subdue their appetite for education.

Rather than searching, they become lost. They are inclined to think that their small mistakes or neglects or errors in judgment don’t really matter all that much. They have not yet learned that everything affects everything else, and that their actions of today are forming their consequences of tomorrow. Their careless acts and their wandering thoughts are swallowing up their most precious resource – time.

It is because they seemed to have so much time that they allowed the individual moments of opportunity to slip unnoticed into an accumulation of empty years.Our philosophy is moving us toward a specific future condition.

So is our current attitude, level of activity, and results. Our current lifestyle is either encouraging us to experience new depths of emotional experience or whispering to us to wait until we have it all.What we are and how we are must be examined not only in the light of our objectives, but also with a keen awareness of the ticking clock.

Maybe we only have a few years left. Maybe we only have a few months left. But wouldn’t it make more sense to be doing something constructive with the time that remains than to be passively waiting for time to take its inevitable toll?