Some people call it carpe diem, others call it YOLO. Either way, there's something really beautiful in thinking about seizing every moment of every single day. This life is too short for us to think about things long-term and to only think in years and weeks. To think about the day that we will have time finally to get something done. Not thinking about the present, but to think too greatly about the future.

Now, I don't say this morbidly. I don't think that we should live every single day expecting that we're going to die. But I do think there's something to be said about seeking into the really deep beauty of living every single day like it's our last. I think about songs like Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying" or movies and books with themes like that. I think about this music and about the events that take place in movies where people are really seizing every moment of every single day of their lives. I can't help but wonder what our lives would look like if we actually deeply thought about every moment of them.

If we sunk into the beauty and the days and we seized every minute because we didn't know how many more we would have. What things that go unsaid would be said? How many more people would we tell that we love them? What acts of ridiculous generosity would we choose to pursue? Where would we travel? Would we work at our same jobs? Would we continue to go to school? Would we be happy with the people we are spending our time with? Would we enjoy how we are spending our free time?

Would we feel like we treated our bodies healthy enough or too healthily? Would we wish that we had drank a few more kale smoothies or would we wish that we had stopped at the McDonald's drive-thru a few more times? Would we regret those last couple glasses of wine or would we wish that we drank a few more six packs? Would we spend more evenings with our friend sitting around a fire and talking while sipping cups of coffee and making s'mores? Or would we spend more time working? Would we spend more time on our projects and on our schoolwork? Or would we focus on people?

Now we can all have our own preference on what matters in our life and I sure hope that we do. Our lives are only meaningful if we're doing what really matters and is meaningful to us.

What is meaningful to me, may not be meaningful to you. What I do hope is that at the end of the day when we look back, the people and the experiences will be the things that mattered. Now I don't know that, but I can say that in my short 18 years of life, the times that I've had with friends, the places I've traveled, the experiences I've had, and the ways that I've loved people outrageously and outlandishly -- those are the things I remember. Those things are the things that stand out and are related to people and are related to being alive and living with fervor and passion.

When I look back I also think about some of the things I regret. I think that all of us at the end of our days and years, and, I suppose our life, and we have a tendency to look back at what we regret. Now, I struggle with regret, because I think that most of the things that we've done, we've done with the intention of pursuing our best selves or a best life and the missteps have created the best things that ever happened. But when I look back, I regret the things I didn't do way more than any of the things I've done.

For that reason, I think that it's very important to spend more time in our lives pushing through barriers, loving people, exploring, adventuring, being outside, being in nature, eating the good highly caloric foods. All of those things are the things that matter at the end of the day and the things that I'm assuming will matter at the end of our lives.

Now I don't know if I like the idea of carpe diem or of YOLO. But I know that I love the idea of living for every moment and making our lives something beautiful and something that we are extremely thankful for. Our lives, at the end of the day, will not be about the jobs we had, but rather the things that we will remember will be the beautiful time we had connecting with people. The experiences and adventures. The things that were once so unexpected but ended up so beautifully. And with that I say, maybe living in the moment and living carpe diem is really just allowing life to take place and unfold as it is. Not as we wish it would.

We set so many expectations in our lives: when we'll get married; where we'll go to school; what our career will be. But we don't always account for the unexpected. And there's a hell of a lot of unexpected in this life. So I think it's time that we start preparing for the unexpected and learn to tolerate and appreciate the beauty of the unexpected. So maybe we aren't supposed to live carpe diem anyway? We aren't supposed to live like we're dying. Maybe we're supposed to live like our lives have meaning and like every action, every minute of every day has some deep rich meaning in it.

I do hope that you'll choose to step back from worrying about the future and allow yourself to be present in every single serendipitous moment and with that may you seek your own version of carpe diem and seize your own days. May your life turn into a beautiful unruly adventure. Cheers.