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Thief of Joy

Lucas A. Davidson
2 min readJan 29, 2024

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Daily Meditation 702–1/29/2024

You’re going to have a good time, today…But. What about tomorrow?

Procrastination.

It is one of the penultimate forms of hoping for the best while (in the “now”) making decisions that are diametrically opposed to succeeding at whatever it is.

10 page report to write? Bah. I’ll do it tomorrow.
Data compilation to complete by EoW? Eh. It’s only Monday. I’ve got all week.
Valentine’s Day comin’! I’ve got time to get something for her…

But there’s a dark “flipside” to procrastination where instead of it putting off that which we don’t want to do
We, instead pull forward things of pleasure that we ought not.

Alcohol, drugs, or other addictions are ways of borrowing joy from tomorrow.

But the payback on it isn’t 1:1. It’s not like bumming $1 from a friend, today, and paying them back $1 tomorrow. No, addictions borrow joy with various and immeasurable future dues. You see, the sip of liquor, today, for the alcoholic yields them an hour or two of satisfaction (today). But, tomorrow, the thirst for even more may be the fee that is due. Maybe, now, it’s two sips…Plus the cost of a fresh bottle.
Then it’s three, plus the headache in the morning.
Then four, plus a sloppy mistake cheating on your spouse. (Who then…

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Lucas A. Davidson
Lucas A. Davidson

Written by Lucas A. Davidson

Daily philosophical meditations on Eudaimonia. These are distillations from the forthcoming book on the topic. Comments or jobs: lucas@multistatewide.com

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