Better than any late hour – December 08, 1957
We all live with some uncertainties; we all at times fear failure; we all worry about many things that haven’t happened; and we all have regrets about some things that have happened. And as a year comes close to its closing, there is lingering in the minds of most of us some thoughts as to what we have done and what we have failed to do.
These thoughts linger in the background of our lives no matter how fast and feverish the pace of this absorbing season. Some have had losses, accidents, illness; some, loss of loved ones; some, discouragement and disappointment. It is always so.
Life is never always altogether trouble free for any of us.
But this we all must admit that much of what we might have worried about hasn’t happened; much that could have occurred in the events of the world and in the affairs of men hasn’t happened. In the words of one eminent observer: “The Creator and Preserver . . . has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year”1—a way through which we have survived, with so much to be thankful for.
True, we have troubles. Every generation has had—and every individual also. As the parents in one, of Thornton Wilder’s plays said of the coming marriage of their son: “Yes, they’ll have a lot of troubles, . . . Everybody has a right to his own troubles.”2
We cannot spare ourselves, or anyone else, all adverse events. (Nor can we legislate ourselves into or out of everything we want to, until men personally are willing to repent and improve.
If in this year we have learned this one lesson, we should be grateful for it.) Sometimes those who are older say to the young: “It’s too late for us, but you do differently.” But none of us at any age—or at any time of year—should assume that it is too late to improve upon the past.
It may be too late for some things, but so long as a person has any part of a year—or a step left to take, or a day left to live, he can improve upon the past. Indeed, any present time is better than any later hour for repentance and improvement. And while there is yet a little left, it is a better time than later to turn toward whatever we should turn toward: not more mistakes, not more misunderstanding—but to turn, if need be, from what we should have done to what we yet should do—grateful for what we have, and also for much that hasn’t happened.
1Wilbur L. Cross, former Governor of Connecticut
2Thornton Wilder, Our Town
December 08, 1957
Broadcast Number 1,477