If we’re honest, most of us go though life believing that what will make us happiest is waiting just around the next bend.  Something deep within our psyche compels us to believe this, despite evidence to the contrary.  For instance, as little children, we set aside our toys and ache to join our older sisters and brothers at school.  When the novelty wears thin, we long to be teens.  When at last we enter high school, we soon become frustrated.  We can hardly wait to begin college and later graduate school and then start our careers.  Surely then we’ll find true happiness. Well, for the most part, the sweet pang of anticipation never ends.  Once you reach the top of the heap, you only start all over again at the bottom.  As G.K. Chesterton succinctly put it: “New roads; new ruts.”

If that’s not bad enough, often the things we long for most let us down once we’ve acquired them. That new syllabus, a new publication, or even a long-awaited promotion may fail to satisfy, and like children, we’re tempted to set them aside, certain that only something else in the future will meet our deepest needs, interests or expectations.

I’m not suggesting the future is bunk.  After all, outcome exists at the intersection of preparation and opportunity. If you merely take events as they come with no forward planning, life slips by, leaving you regretting the past and longing for lost opportunities.  Indeed, our vocation as educators is to prepare students for tomorrow’s challenges: he who would be fulfilled constantly must adapt to the future, to paraphrase the Buddha.  This is especially apposite in light of today’s rapid -fire technological and ideological changes.  Having said that, there’s something else we educators should be doing for our students.  It’s teaching them that the greatest gift we have is the gift of the present.  All else is an abstraction.

If the key to the future is the present, we must say to our students take time now to read the books you say you want to read.  Make your mistakes today if you want to avoid them tomorrow.

What application is there for a busy teacher?  Just this: find time to teach, supervise graduate students, and pursue your research projects, but always make time to listen to any student or colleague that comes to your office for a chat. Make this the moment for the people who need you, for tomorrow may be too late.  Above all, never be too busy to pause and wonder.

We are more than mere muscle and synapses. We have souls.  Martin Buber, André Neher, Dorothy L. Sayers, Jürgen Moltmann, Sr. Wendy Beckett, Alister McGrath and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus are but a few distinguished scholars who have made a conscious decision to create a regular time for the numinous in the midst of their busy schedules.  In so doing, they tapped a previously unidentified reservoir which gave them wisdom, peace and a desire to help others in need.  So make time to cultivate your spiritual life now not later.

While that which makes us truly happy may well exist some time in the future, don’t imagine it’s the only tense in which opportunity lies; rich potential exists now.  The worst blunder you can make is to be so distracted by your tomorrows that you miss your todays.   Remember, no time is ever wasted for teachers who recognize that the present is really the obverse of the future.