Thursday, May 16, 2013

Carpe Diem! Should I?

A lot of times it is said that life should be large and not long. It is a famous dialogue in a movie and I think the most famous quote that has the same theme must be Carpe Diem.
Seize the day! is the meaning of this statement. I want to talk about what it means? How does one seize a day? Especially the condition when and if seizing the day might make me lose the week? What should I do in such a case. It can always be maintained that the completely condensed form of the writing comes out to these two words and can be interpreted in more ways than one. Then again, if something can be interpreted in more than once then people will always do so. The biggest examples for this should be religious scriptures which somehow preach peace and harmony while allowing large scale massacres and allow molesting young children while hating Gays.
Maybe, Carpe Diem was a cheer word of some team during the Latin era. Something like "Chak De" has become for India. While the word itself means leave it in English the phrase somehow has turned into a war cry for Indians. The movie helped of course. I believe something similar happened with Carpe Diem. People loved the phrase so much it lost its literal meaning and gained a phrasal meaning so as to say.
Anyways, lets go along with the phrasal meaning then. Seize the day as it comes. Now, there are two doubts in my mind regarding this.
One- How does one save oneself from doing long lasting harms in attempt to 'seize the day'? Or maybe the term means that we stop caring about long lasting harms. Then it becomes a lot like the teachings of Gita. Your actions should be without the concern of results. It becomes quite shady considering it can be taken in a negative way as well. People might stop doing anything substantial or may resort to doing evil things thinking they should not be concerned with its results.
I personally believe there is no right or wrong. My motto is Actions have Consequences and if you are ready to do something be ready to face the results as well.
In this regard, seize the day actually sounds the work of devil himself. Maybe Carpe Diem was what the snake told Eve. Seize the day or the apple as in her case. Again, maybe I am interpreting it wrong but then if a man can interpret it wrong so can some other man which means people might be living by the wrong philosophy all this time.
In my opinion, either you are following it (which itself might be wrong) and if you are taking caution then you are not following it at all.

Now comes the second doubt I have. I feel like doing nothing. So, I ended my day on my bed lazing around. Did I seize this day or let it pass. I enjoyed the whole event a lot so I can't say that it was bad for me but I did nothing productive. What does this day means? Is the phrase Carpe Diem a way to take people out of bed and to work. Was it invented to force-guilt people into believing that if they have not done anything productive in the day then they have not seized the day. Was it a way to commercialize the society. Maybe initially the phrase was created by people to force their employees to work instead of chilling about. Come on people- What did you do today? Did you Carpe Diem? Did you do something productive?
Maybe Carpe Diem is something Google's 20% allotted time. You can do anything personal but you should do something productive. Maybe everything comes down to this only. If society feels that you are being productive then you are Carpe Dieming the hell out of life.
Maybe this Carpe Diem thing is all about a person's personal list-fulfillment. If you are doing everything I like then you are seizing the day.
That includes being happy. For example, parents always without fail want their children to be happy. This does not mean happiness as the child wants it. It is more like happiness in the boundaries set by the parents. These boundaries might be anything including expectations or even the norms of the society. While not all parents might have the same rules they do exist.
So, Carpe Diem might be the same for friends and everyone else in our life. It is how they see the meaning of the phrase that defines whether you are doing it right or not.
I also means that a person can define it as he feels. He can setup long term goals with each day breakups and if he does that then he is seizing the day. But then isn't it something called time-management.
And if I am right most people with impeccable time management are considered weird and are told to come out of all this and seize the day. They are considered losing out on life. These people who are actually utilizing the time perfectly are often considered not Carpe Dieming the life.
It has been often depicted in the movies (both Hollywood and Bollywood) and is also part of the stories. This again brings up the topic of what means Carpe Diem.
I guess we are back to square one. This is always the case with me. Round and round and I still do not know what is the meaning of Carpe Diem or is it just a phrase used to fool people into believing that whatever life they are living it is not good enough. If you are working towards a life it might go away in the past and if you enjoy it right now then you screw your past. A balance of course is the key to everything but then again, a balance is something that is either a miracle or an illusion!

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