Carpe Diem Through A Mirror - An Essay on the Concept of Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem: Through A Mirror

      Carpe diem is the thought of seizing the day by making the most of any opportunities one may come across. Some of these opportunities may be selfish or interfere with current plans. Getting around this fork in the road becomes difficult and thus brings questions of whether or not seizing the day is right. While reading poems, such as “Lying in a Hammock…” by James Wright as well as songs like “In my Life” by The Beatles, it was easy to see how difficult and contradicting the concept carpe diem can become. Negatively, carpe diem can become selfish and result in hurting others as well as leave them regretting the actions of their past. A person may move away to seize their time but in the process they could have really hurt someone was close to them prior to moving. Positively, seizing the day can leave someone without regrets and can even make others feel greater joy. The effects of carpe diem all depend on how it’s implemented by each person and in my case, I find positive outcomes such as making others happy while becoming happy myself, when I seize the day.

      Carpe diem is like a person with dissociative identity disorder and no treatment, very random, highly unpredictable and seriously confusing. This brings out the first personality of carpe diem, the negative. It may show up when you least expect it and can do so, so far down the line that one may feel as if they have completely missed out on all of their chances at seizing the day. This brings out the first personality of carpe diem, the negative. In James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”, the narrator has what could be called a carpe diem revelation. While lying in the hammock, he begins to notice vibrant forms of life surrounding him and says a few things to prove this like “Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,” (1) and “Down the ravine behind the empty house, /The cowbells follow one another” (4-5). All of these life forms surround him in a way that makes the reader feel how isolated he feels in that he has almost never seized a day the way he wanted to. Instead he has relaxed away his years and now realizes that he should have done more and actually tried to be more of an extrovert. This is illustrated well in the final three lines of the poem when Wright says “I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. / A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. / I have wasted my life” (11-13). All of his life, he has seized the day by relaxing, and now comes to a sudden realization that he should have tried harder. He also feels as if it’s too late to change this. But he obviously doesn’t understand that it is never too late to seize the day. All of the opportunities that he may have missed out on only opened up doors for him to walk through later in his life. Perhaps that is the message he wanted to relay. Perhaps the narrator never seized the days after his realization. Whatever the case, the only certainty is that carpe diem isn’t easy to figure out and can leave a person feeling immense regret. But there is more to this personality. In Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “Free Bird” the vocalist sings “For I must be travelling on, now / 'Cause there's too many places I've got to see” (3-4), and “Bye, bye, it's been a sweet love / Though this feeling I can't change / But please don't take it badly” (10-12). He is leaving because he feels he needs to. It’s his way of seizing the day. At the same time, he sees that he is hurting a girl that he loves and it is a relationship in which the love is mutual. This easily illustrates the idea that while someone may seize the day, they may appear selfish and hurt those who are close to them.

      Feeling regret can be a sad time in anyone’s life. The feeling that one missed out can hurt worse than the deepest wound and for some may actually be the deepest wound. Carpe diem can actually keep us as people from feeling regret. In the poem “To His Coy Mistress”, Andrew Marvell writes “And your quaint honour turn to dust, / And into ashes all my lust:” (29-30). He is simply saying that if he and his mistress do not seize what time they have, they will end up regretting this moment for the rest of their lives. Carpe diem’s positive side can also require more conscious decision making when attempting to seize the day. Some may say that this defeats the purpose of seizing the day, but as long as a person has done something that they really yearned to do then carpe diem is still intact and can even create long term benefits such as precious and priceless memories. In the song, “In My life” by The Beatles, John Lennon displays this when he sings

There are places I remember All my life, though some have changed Some forever, not for better Some have gone and some remain All these places had their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all

He is showing how joyous it is to, later in his life, look back at all of the past moments in which he seized the day with others. This act of reflecting is like looking at carpe diem through a mirror. But this mirror is much like a paradox in that one should less often see themselves and more often see the life and joy of others that they care for.

      I’ve experienced the remembrance of carpe diem myself which is why I chose this positive aspect to be more prevalent in my life. Before I ever think of seizing the day alone, I make an effort to involve those who are close to me such as friends, family and significant others. I have always believed that a moment is cherished based off of who I’ve done something with rather than what I did. This is the sole reason that parties exist. A person can have fun celebrating by themselves, but they instead throw a party because they know that they will have much more fun if they share the joyous occasion with others. By doing so, they have seized the day, and in turn created happiness for others that they care about instead of being selfish and isolating themselves.

      Seizing the day takes time, effort and experience to fully understand it and can contradict itself more often than not. While Carpe diem’s paradox and rollercoaster-like personalities may toss around one’s emotions like rag dolls, said person may fix this by making more conscious, less brash decisions. Just as the timeless cliché says beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the concept applies to carpe diem in that seizing the day differs from person to person.