The Loan is Due

Years are loans. Time, that shyster among us all, is the banker, ever loaning, never giving. Its credit is conditional.

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Today, December 31st, our loan for the past 365 days comes due. Payment is demanded, like it or not. Such is the way of all loans…they mature.

We dance around due dates. So soon, we lament. We squander the year’s remaining resources in profligate carousals and the pagan idea of buy now, pay later. We choose to spend the last pennies of our credit line on wanton celebrations and manic revelry.

Who can blame us? Living on somebody else’s largess is easy. But all bankers keep ledgers. Debt is hard as iron on our balance sheets. Our assets are soft as marshmallows. We run, we pretend, we rationalize, but the deadline always looms. Time’s bill collector is a relentless pursuer.

Loans are not earned income; hence the cliché, ‘easy come, easy go.’ We’ll pledge our first born to get Time’s easy cash in our palms. We’ve had 365 days of reprieve to plunder the treasury, to pilfer the vault that overflows with Time’s specie. Now it’s due. What’s to show for it?

We check our diaries, our calendars. They’re filled less with thoughts than packed with action. But just sand nevertheless, ever flowing through our hour glass. Nothing retained. Palms empty. Where did the time go, we ask?

What if banker Time, as a condition of loan renewal, required evidence of how we spent our days? Would it discover how we squandered the use of our allocated assets of time? How we wiled away gold talents in wild schemes and mad pursuits?

Most loans contain a clause that in the event of default the loan is due ‘on demand.’ That was a foreign concept to me until I signed loan documents. The day remains a black spot on an otherwise lackluster career of credit.

We were assembled around a large conference table. The banker, his lawyer (where there’s money, there are lawyers!) and me. Lying in neat windrows around that colossal table were stacks of forms written in letters so minute they would qualify for a used car contract.

Leo, the lawyer, asked, “Do you have any questions, son?”

“Uh, well, only one, sir. What exactly is in these documents?” I asked.

Leo grinned at the banker. “Nothing that’s good for you, my boy. Sign here.”

Like dogs, loans appear harmless. They mostly sleep until they’re hungry. Like excessive loan interest, they’re voracious eaters. It was the ‘on demand’ provision that bit me!

Time has an ‘on demand’ clause. We remain here at the forbearance of the Banker. The loan can be called due at any time. Fortunately, tomorrow, for most of us, the loan will automatically renew. Fear is the vigorish we pay.

Last Sunday on the coast we had an early spring. I sat on the steps leading to the beach. The well-trod pathway of summer, a white sandy trail, lay in front of me. Close to the water grew a desiccated clump of sea oats, a barrier to the trail’s straight-line continuation.

The trail diverged into a ‘Y’ to circumvent it. A dilemma was created. Which route to choose? Right or left? I weighed the options. It really didn’t matter. Both trails led to the same swirling sea. Maybe Darwin was right all along.

As I mulled over the alternatives, a lone butterfly, obviously a leftover from the fall migration, flittered by. I watched it float effortlessly over the granite riprap. It seemed to be in contemplation also.

It landed on a wilted, yellowed flower whose loan from the Banker had come due. Disappointed, the butterfly then lit on the sand at my feet, apparently considering its preferences. It chose the rocks as a refuge. We all choose something.

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The poet, Louise Gluck, chose a fortune teller, and writes:

“Great things, she said, are ahead of you, or perhaps behind you; it is difficult to be sure. And yet, she added, what is the difference? Right now you are a child holding hands with a fortune-teller. All the rest is hypothesis and dream.”

So, is this what we’re left with as we face 2015…a memory of yesterday and a dream of tomorrow?

Friends, just renew the loan, buy the ticket and take the ride. Happy New Year!


Bud Hearn
December 31, 2014