The "Carpe Diem" Cliche

Every time I hear “carpe diem,” or any message related to “seize the day,” I shudder at its utter cliché quality. My problem doesn’t lie in the message’s meaning, but in the fact that that it’s just too short. The phrase does not even demand explanation, and so people just schlep it around like nobody’s business. Without an explanation, I don’t feel any substance in the meaning of “carpe diem.” But despite my aversion to this well-worn cliché, I have created my own explanation of “carpe diem” that I actually like. In other words, personalizing a way to think about an old cliché has made the cliché meaningful and persuasive.

As a way to rephrase “carpe diem,” I ask myself, “Anyone of us can die tomorrow. So, then how do you live your days?” This sounds a bit morbid and extreme, but it is a powerful way to think about one’s life. Of course, I don’t embrace pure hedonism, nor does my explanation stop at doing what you want for a living because life is short.

Instead, I focus in a little more. My “carpe diem” is about the everyday experiences, each little moments of passing time that begs to be felt with an open mind. Simply, if you want to cry, then cry your eyes out and suffer. If you want to laugh out loud, then laugh with a true gusto of enjoyment. What I mean is that feelings should not be suppressed, but every single one of them should be felt for the complete experience of each moment.

I allude to this “experience of the moment” in a lot of my writing because it is a part of my personal philosophy. But what about the future? Disregarding the future to enjoy the present is unrealistic for anyone who wants to pave a comfortable life in the future. However, if you believe that you can die at any moment, then, the future does not seem so worrisome. It might still seem like a dead-end, but the potential consequences of your mistakes do not seem so bleak. When you have made an irretrievable mistake, you can more easily laugh it off instead of regretting your mistake or wallowing in the sorrow and guilt of how you might have ruined your future. Your life just might end, so why waste time worrying over something that can’t be fixed, and that just might work out in the end?

Hopefully, we don’t really die tomorrow. But by elaborating on “carpe diem” with a personal explanation, I have realized the true power of the phrase. Nobody really likes clichés, but there is a reason that they have become clichés. You can feel their true powers when you really think about them in relation to your own life and create personal explanations for them. The beauty is that they are clichés that too many people use too many times, which means that they work for everyone at anytime.