You Don’t Have to Carpe the Diem

Last updated on: January 18, 2017 at 5:59 pm by Kate Cousino

You Don’t Have to Carpe the Diem 2017-01-18T17:59:37-04:00 Kate Cousino

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Seize the day. Go gonzo. Live the good life. Give it all you’ve got. Suck the marrow out of life. Life is what you make it.

Carpe diem.

Except sometimes the day doesn’t seem good, and there’s no energy for seizing or sucking or giving or making. Sometimes there’s grayness and tedium and a soul that can’t seem to find the energy either to hate or to love.

What then to make of these catchphrases, these pocket philosophies? What then to do with yourself?

If you are a movie character, then you have heartbreaking moments with loved ones until someone says or does or witnesses something that breaks through the grey and out you emerge like a butterfly, like a genius from a janitor or a poet from a pedant.

Or you don’t. And you realize you have stumbled onto a tragedy rather than a comedy and there’s no story without catastrophe and everything seems to point in just one awful seductive dark and silent direction. Your battles win you nothing but the bones of a giant fish lashed to your boat or the weariness of trophies on the wall but no new challenge to justify them, not today, not today.

Not today, and there is no day but today. What do yesterday’s accomplishments matter to today’s hollowness? What point is there to tomorrow, when you have to go through today to get there? What does tomorrow have to offer anyway—even if it is like yesterday, it will soon enough be a yesterday again, just a cold and stale memory with no life to it, nothing to offer.

I heard of Robin William’s death and I went to find some clever or poignant bit of video, some quote to pay tribute or put into context the tragedy of his death, of any death, of this death. And all I got was snippets of his character in Dead Poets Society or his character in Good Will Hunting spouting pocket philosophies to earnest and troubled young men in lines that other, real, earnest and troubled men and women have taken and cherished and incorporated into their own persons and it made me sad and it made me angry and I didn’t know why.

Except I do know why. Because Robin Williams didn’t have it in him to Carpe another Diem. YOLO, we tell each other and ourselves, thinking we’ve discovered something important. You only live once, and the unspoken corollary is “make the most of it.” Except then, what becomes of us when our most just doesn’t seem like enough?

What happens when life or illness or your own mind sucker punches you and your highest ambition each day becomes not sinking any further? What if you only live once, and once seems like too much? When the way you are spending your day seems like a waste of breath, but you can’t quite find it in you to do more?

If you’ve ever felt that way—if you ever do feel that way—this is what I hope you will remember.

You don’t have to Carpe the crappy Diem.

You don’t have to suck the marrow out of life. Sucking on a popsicle while you watch your kids or grandkids or dog or someone’s else kids or dog run around the park is enough. Sucking on a cough drop while you think about getting out of bed is enough, for that matter.

You are allowed to be unambitious. You are a full human being of worth and value even if you are ordinary. You can be weak, frail, tired, or sad and still be loved and desired.

Don’t fret over the Diem. If it passes and you feel like nothing was done today, that’s OK. Not every day has to be optimal. Not every day has to be lived to the full. You’ll have days to live to the full again—really you will. But it doesn’t make you or your life a failure if that day isn’t today.

In Dead Poet’s Society, Robin William’s character, John Keating, passes this “Carpe Diem” philosophy on to his class of prep school kids. As they absorb it, their lives change, growing richer, brighter, more alive in different ways. Until one boy finds himself against a wall, unable to seize hold of his dream today and unable to imagine waiting for it, and he kills himself.

Naturally, it tears apart the other characters. How could seizing the day have lead to this? What went wrong? And Keating is no less affected by the failure of his philosophy. But when he goes to leave the school, his students all stand on their desks in a gesture of respect and love and honor, revealing that they still feel themselves to have benefited from his tutelage, and the movie ends on this note.

But I am dissatisfied, because this is what I want to say: “Bide in patience. Wait a time. Walk through the gray days knowing the sun is still there even when you can’t see it. Be ready for the sun. You don’t have to seize the day. You can wait and seize another. There will be more days.”

You don’t have to Carpe the Diem. There will be more days.

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