Small tidbits and Sparks of wisdom

A person may recognize that his actions are wrong and may even sincerely intend to change, yet convince himself that there will be time later. He imagines that he can first satisfy his desires, have his fill of them, and afterward withdraw from sin and return to Gd.
The Duties of the Heart, The Gate of Repentance, Chapter 7, warns against precisely this calculation. A person imagines that he will draw away from sin after first fulfilling his desire for it and having his fill of it. In doing so, he imagines that he can fool the Almighty, as it were. He wants both worlds: first the sin, and afterward the repentance.
Our Masters, of blessed memory, described this attitude clearly:
“He who says, ‘I will sin and repent, sin and repent,’ will be given no chance to repent.” — Yoma 85b
The problem is therefore not merely the individual act of sin. The person has incorporated repentance itself into his calculation. Teshuvah, which was given as the means of returning to Gd, becomes part of the justification that allows him to continue doing what he knows is wrong. He tells himself that there will always be another opportunity to correct what he is doing today.
But tomorrow does not belong to man.
The Admonition at the end of the book expresses this directly:
My soul, make provisions abundantly, not meagerly,
While you still are alive and able;
For a long journey lies ahead of you.
The opportunity to make provisions exists specifically while a person is alive and able to act. Whatever must be repaired, corrected, returned, abandoned, or accomplished belongs to the present world and to the present opportunity.
The warning therefore continues:
Do not say, “Tomorrow I will make provisions”;
For today is gone,
And you do not know what the morrow may bring.
Realize that yesterday will never return,
And that all that you did then
Is weighed, counted, and appraised.
Yesterday cannot be lived again. Once the day has passed, the actions performed during that day have entered the accounting of a person’s life. They are “weighed, counted, and appraised.” Tomorrow, meanwhile, remains unknown. The only period actually placed into a person’s hands is the present.
For this reason, the author continues with an even stronger warning:
Do not say, “Tomorrow I will act”;
For the day of death is hidden from all who live.
Hasten to do each day the appointed task,
For death, at any time, may send its arrow and bolt.
A person does not know the length of his life. He therefore cannot build his repentance upon an assumption that a particular tomorrow will arrive. The appointed work of each day belongs to that day.
The chapter concludes:
Do not delay doing the prescribed work of each day;
For as a bird wanders from its nest,
So must man wander from his place.
This is the final warning of The Gate of Repentance, Chapter 7. Repentance cannot safely be assigned to some future period after a person has finished pursuing what he presently desires. Today disappears, yesterday never returns, tomorrow is unknown, and the day on which a person must leave this world remains hidden from him. Therefore, the work that belongs to today must be done today.