THE TIME IS SHORT

You who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day;

You who are keeping wretched quarrels alive because you cannot quite make up your mind the day to sacrifice your pride and end them;

You who are passing others sullenly upon the street, not speaking to them out of some silly spite, and yet knowing that it would fill you with shame and remorse if you heard that one of these were dead tomorrow morning;

You who are letting your neighbor starve, till you hear that he is dying of starvation;

Or letting your friend’s heart ache for a word of forgiveness, appreciation or sympathy, which you mean to give her some day;

If only you could know and see and feel, all of a sudden, that “the time is short,” how it would break the spell! How you would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do. 

-- Adapted from Phillips Brooks in “The Purpose and Use of Comfort,” 1906

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