Carpe Diem means “seize the day” and this motto typically gets mixed up with the common cliches in this world. However, it has one of the most valuable and simple lessons behind it that everyone should live by because quite frankly, we should seize the day. I had a teacher in high school that had a mural on his wall about Carpe Diem, paired with the quote from the novel “Life of Pi,” and the quote said, “You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it” (Martel, Life of Pi). I remember going into his classroom the first day of my senior year and seeing the quote painted on his wall and not thinking much of it. Just that it was a quote that clearly meant something to my teacher. As the year progressed he constantly made references to this quote and how it related to Carpe Diem and eventually I understood why it was such an important lesson to understand.
In order to seize the day and accept life the way it is, we as humans must have a certain character about ourselves that allow us to do this. I find that in today’s world, we are constantly surrounded by people that have an incredibly pessimistic outlook on life. Such negative outlooks and attitudes tend to become so overwhelming that we unfortunately conform to them. It is so hard today to break free from such negative perspectives that it is unusual to see someone truly “seize the day” and make the most out of their life, even if their life isn’t exactly as they planned it to be. If you think about it, there are only a few people that truly enjoy their life and remain optimistic regardless of all the negative people they are surrounded by everyday.
To “seize the day” is not only about your character, but about your maturity as a human being. We tend to take bad situations that happen to us and pity ourselves when we shouldn’t. Instead, we should - as my past teacher’s mural says - “take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it” (Martel, Life of Pi). For instance, many students after receiving an unexpected bad grade on an exam or essay will say some bitter comment about the teacher or about the class. Truthfully, we are all culprits of blaming others and not holding ourselves accountable for the outcome of an exam or essay. Yet, we should take those bad outcomes on exams or essays and say, “I will study harder for the next exam” or “I will go to the teacher before the due date of the essay and get his or her comments on it” or even, “I guess now I know how to prepare better for the next exam or essay.” By taking a bad situation or outcome and turning it into something positive we not only build character for ourselves, but it helps us mature as human beings, which it is something we should be doing every day.
Frankly, it is important to understand the idea of Carpe Diem because as we get older and wiser we understand that things happen to us that we won’t necessarily understand. There won’t be a rhyme or reason behind it, it is just what life had in store for us. However, it is what we make the most out of it that matters. We hear it all the time from adults, that life isn’t fair and we must make the most out of what we have, but it’s true. As weird as it is to think about, our parents understand what we go through everyday because they experienced it too. They have experienced hardships, failure and rejection but they prevailed. It is important to remember that, that they prevailed. As long as you fight through the hardship you will rise above all the negative aspects of your life, you just have to trust yourself. That even though life may seem cruel and unfair you must “seize the day” and accept the life you have in order to make the best out of it because, in the end, your character and how you perceive certain events is what will make you prosper in life.
