Seize the Day?

Carpe Diem!     

Seize the Day! 

Robin Williams 

Dead Poets Society

(Robin Williams as an English teacher in a boys' prep school shows his class old yearbooks and then makes the following speech.) 

They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

Hold On....Not So Fast!   

The expression carpe diem comes from a poem by Horace , a famous Roman lyric poet c.65-8BC.  The full meaning is "seize the day because tomorrow cannot be trusted."  It was a cornerstone of the Epicureans, "feast now for tomorrow we die!"  Really?  Is this what Robin Williams was trying to teach in his poetry class?  These other men are now feeding the daffodils....

Reframe Carpe Diem....

When we reframe something, we take a look at it in a different perspective--like putting a new frame around a picture. 

So how about this meaning--seize the day now because we believe in tomorrow?  Or, seize today to build tomorrow? These are mottos with hope...not the despair of acting now because it all dies tomorrow.  

Let's take another step.  Look at the image above.  I am positively intrigued by it!  It uses the hands on the Sistine Chapel ceiling--of God the Father reaching down to Adam the creation.  There's a gap there.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, the gap between God and people is closed by the covenant.  In Christian tradition, Jesus stands in the gap and connects people with God.  Either way--we sieze the day because God gave us the day and meets us into it. The day after belongs to God as does the future.

"This is the day which the Lord has made.  

We will rejoice and be glad in it." 

                                                                                                          Psalms 118:24