Carpe Diem – Fish? Fish Bait?
It’s an age-old tale – the handsome, yet socially awkward guy wants to woo the pretty girl and seeks the advice and wisdom from the older, wiser man. Sound familiar? Now your movie trivia question of the day – can you name the movie? If you said Roxanne you are correct! Chris, the hot young fireman is asking for advice from C.D. (played by Steve Martin), the wise fire chief. C.D. asks Chris, “Do you know the phrase carpe diem?” Chris responds, “It’s, it’s fish, fish bait, right?” C.D. hits him with, “No, it is latin. It means, ‘seize the day.’ There may be no tomorrow, so do it now. Seek life now, while you have the chance.”
A popular slang term from 2012 captures the essence – YOLO – You Only Live Once. Wikipedia defines YOLO as: Along the same lines as the Latin carpe diem ('seize the day'), it is a call to live life to its fullest extent, even embracing behavior which carries inherent risk.
The Cambridge on-line dictionary defines YOLO as an abbreviation for "you only live once": used, especially on social media, to mean that you should do things that are enjoyable or exciting, even if they are silly or slightly dangerous.
So, a couple of questions for you:
1. What does the blog picture have to do with Carpe Diem?
2. Are you embracing Carpe Diem and YOLO? Are you living YOUR life to the fullest extent?
Are you familiar with the Blog picture and its relevance to Carpe Diem? If not – Thoughts? Guesses? Hint – the glasses are iconic to an early rock-n-roller.
Per liveabout.com –
On February 2, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper played their last show as part of the "Winter Dance Party" tour, stopping this night at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, IA. The admission for the show was $1.25, but the concert did not sell out. The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" closed out the night.
After, the band began discussion of their next stop on the tour, Fargo, ND. After months on the winter tour in uncomfortable, drafty buses, the band members' health was waning. Holly pitched the idea to charter a four-person plane to their next stop.
When he learned that band member Waylon Jennings—who would eventually become a country star in his own right—had decided to take the freezing bus instead, Holly had joked, "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up." Jennings joked back, "Well, I hope your plane crashes.
--
In the early morning hours of February 3, 1959, a private plane carrying musicians J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly (most famous for founding The Crickets) crashed outside of Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all on board.
Buddy Holly’s Glasses mark the entrance to the trail that leads to the plane’s crash site. The musicians who died on that flight could never have anticipated that their lives would end that night. I wonder if they had regrets. C.D.’s advice from Roxanne hits home for me, “‘seize the day.’ There may be no tomorrow, so do it now. Seek life now, while you have the chance.”
Carpe Diem is a central theme in the movie Dead Poets Society, where a group of prep school students commit to ‘sucking the marrow out of life.’ - a line from Henry David Thoreau (emphasis is mine):
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.…”
“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”
Thoreau’s famous quote sums up the topic for me, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”I commit --- re-commit – to living MY True life and have the courage to live life to the fullest