Portrait of the Artist at a Prematurely Old Man

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every
Bachelor of Arts
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very
important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something
you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin
of omission and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-
thinking people, from Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shudda.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin
as long as, in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don't bother your head about sins of commission
because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you
wouldn't be committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you get really painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you
haven't added up the stubs of and the appointments you
haven't kept and the bills you haven't paid and the letters
you haven't written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful
lack of beauty.
Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red letter day
or night every time you neglected to do your duty;
You didnít get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forgot to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly
cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home,
and this round of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven't done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more
trouble than the unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if
some kind of sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

Ogden Nash