Carpe Diem!

I like the way the term sounds. For all my self-proclaimed knowledge and love for la langue Anglais, I heard the term fairly recently or late in life. And see what I found on google (oh how I luuuuuuurv you google...tu sahi hai boss). Oh! And I love aapro wikipedia also hanh!

Carpe diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by Horace (Odes 1.11). It is popularly translated as seize the day, although a more literal translation of "carpe" would be "pluck" (pluck the day), as in the plucking of fruit.

The poem:
Leuconoe, don't ask — it's dangerous to know —
what end the gods will give me or you.
Don't play with Babylonian
fortune-telling either.
Better just deal with whatever comes your way.
Whether you'll see several more winters or whether the last one
Jupiter gives you is the one
even now pelting the rocks on the shore with the waves
of the Tyrrhenian sea--be smart, drink your wine.
Scale back your long hopes
to a short period.
Even as we speak, envious time
is running away from us.
Seize the day, trusting little in the future.

Now isn't that something!! I like what it stands for, the implied meaning of it. We all go through so much in life. Every one of us has 'baggage', complexities, complexes, complications, compounded problems /issues/ concerns most of which seem such a fait accompli.

In reality (is there a reality anyway, for aren't we all in an illusory bubble which is waiting to burst and cast us all into vapour? ooooh, sorry for the digression), the reality as we know no other, is that we all tend to get caught up in the whirlpool of ifs and buts and whys and why nots and God alone knows what else!

We fail miserably to lead happy lives (now that has to be some figure of speech there - miserably happy - oxymoron??) and we become totally self-absorbed, self-centred and blinkered, probably myopic even. Because happiness is something we crave for, we aspire for and we all have an idea of, though none of us knows how it looks. Every one of the 6 billion people inhabiting this little blue planet has a version of what happiness feels like. Yet we make it so bloody difficult to be so.

Maybe, just maybe we're all afraid to be happy. Wonder why! Is it because then we'd have no raison d'etre, no reason to worry, crib, compare, be jealous, competitive, or what have you. Yes! we revel in being unhappy. I think I've hit the nail. No, not actively I say, but we seem to feed our fears of never being happy and so it comes true. Of course does that mean we all need to be deliriously happy and go about our daily living with cheesy smiles on our faces like little smileys? No way, but methinks we're just a way too weird and complicated species. That bloody brain of ours needs to be shot to smithereens sometimes, or maybe just plain ignored. Ignorance is truly bliss eh?

For instance I'll worry about what he'll think or feel or say if I said so and so to him. Will he get uptight and defensive and therefore offensive or brood or recoil or what? But then I think to myself - I have one life, and here's a guy I like (I really do) - who's fairly chilled out, but yet keeps me at a distance. So why not tell him what I feel when I feel it and as long as I'm not hurting him, theek hai na? Am sure I drive him up the wall, but then we've all driven someone somewhere up various perpendicular inclines sometime or the other, so be it, if he's the (un) lucky one.

So yeah, I have one life and I need to carpe diem! Get it? I wish more of us did! Let's all try and be happy ok? Ok?