Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem- seize the day!

To seize the day is to make the most of the opportunities presented and the chances given. This is exactly what we are encouraged to do by Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations...

"Waste not the remainder of your life in thoughts about others, except when you are concerned with some unselfish purpose." -3.4

Aurelius is not condemning the practice of selfless love or of self-sacrifice. He is instead urging people to live unconcerned with what others think of them. Likewise, Aurelius also insists that man should live in the present, not concerned with the past or the future, as both are beyond the control of the individual. "Every man lives only in the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or uncertain. Short then is the time which any man lives" 3.10. In light of this fact, this shortness of our time on earth, Aurelius encourages us to carpe diem, to seize the opportunities that present themselves before us.

"No longer wander at random. You shall not live to read your own memoirs, or the acts of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the selections from the books which you were reserving for your old age. Hasten then to the goal which you have before you. Throw away vain hopes and come to your own aid, while yet you may, if you care at all for yourself." -3.14

Aurelius is making the point that we can only live in the time we are allotted at the present moment. We have no guarantee of being around in the future, and we cannot live in the past. So, we must fix our eyes on the goals at present and "hasten" to those goals. We must eagerly seek to achieve them. We can hope in nothing and no one else to accomplish our goals for us. Whether the goal is surviving finals week or becoming a brain surgeon, the responsibility for the time we have and the goals we seek to accomplish lies solely in our hands.

With that in mind: Carpe Diem!






I commented on Treya's post.