How much of human life is lost in waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many words and promises are promises of conversation!
From Prudence, Essays, First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can't tell if this is an admonishment against words in favor of action - but I will take it as it seems to me. The promise of future conversations is becoming tiresome to me. Perhaps my impatience is growing - it is strange because talking is supposed to help working through anxiety. But nowadays, I am not so sure.
Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the most distant climates.
It is also becoming more difficult to keep track of what is "local" and what is "global" when communicating with others around the world. How to keep it sufficiently separated in order not to feel overwhelmed with that over which I have no control as compared to a tragedy down the street. Cosmically, aren't both important? Practically, if I want to do anything at all, I have to make realistic choices. How can a person "integrate his being across all these distracting forces"? Maybe the thing he is trying to say is that despite the distractions, keep your word - "keep a slender human word among the storms" despite distractions.
Even more powerful, that a person's intent to fulfill a promise, could take months or years - yet persistence would make the promise good.
What if the promise is not fulfilled? Perhaps a promise was made contingent upon another - what then? Better not to compel a promise of friendship.
Every man's imagination hath its friends; and life would be dearer with such companions. But if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the Deity but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds.
And maybe consider whether these distractions are in accordance with what you imagined of your life - not to generally integrate across all distractions, but make some of the distractions, such as companions, particular since "life would be dearer with such companions." It is clear that although having associates with like ambitions and ideas is preferable, it may not happen - and check whether the hoped-for relationships are not based on personal ambition - suggesting that those that come into your life voluntarily or those with whom you associate voluntarily, are the sweetest and most lasting friends.