Carpe Diem

Recently, my wife and I were driving down a two-lane Maine backcountry highway on a sunny Sunday morning. It was a good, safe road, recently repaved, with broad shoulders and plenty of room for passing slower vehicles.

I was doing the speed limit of 55 miles per hour in a straight stretch when I saw a big tractor-trailer rig in the distance, coming towards us at about the same speed. As the truck neared, I could see it was a fully loaded flatbed trailer of assorted items. But I also noticed the load at the rear was not well secured and appeared to be coming loose.

As it got closer, as though in slow motion, I could see it was a vertically stacked pile of scaffolding parts and, to my horror, it seemed about to fall off the truck into our path. Our combined speed was probably over 100 mph so there was little I could do in that split second. We passed one another in a flash, just as the metal tumbled sideways off the truck into our lane. I saw it fall in my rear view mirror, close enough that we also heard the loud clattering of metal pipes on pavement.

And then the immensity of the moment hit me. A millisecond made the difference between what had actually happened and might have happened. The “might have” could well have meant our instantaneous deaths – or at least severe, life-threatening injuries – if the heavy metal scaffolding had landed on the hood of our car and crashed through the windshield, if I had braked instead of maintaining my speed.

That “might have been” stayed with me for days and still haunts me.

As a teenager and into my young adult years, I was often a bit reckless and took a lot of unnecessary risks, mostly involving outdoor sports like downhill skiing and mountain climbing, sustaining my share of broken bones and other assorted scrapes and bruises. But never did I have such a harrowing near-death experience as I did in that brief instant on the country highway.

In reality, it’s the knowledge of what might have been that haunts because, had I glanced away at that moment, I might never have known how close we came to utter disaster.

Still, it gives me pause and a new insight into the notion of fully appreciating the present, of being in the moment and making the most of it. Every day is a new day, with new opportunities, and every moment is fresh. Yet, we get lulled into our daily routines and time can pass without our notice, or it passes too slowly in our eagerness for the next event.

We focus too much on the short term – the planned weekend activities, the coming vacation – and we forsake the moment we are in. Catch phrases like “Monday blues,” “hump Wednesday” and “thank God it’s Friday” become part of our weekly lexicon, as though time can’t move fast enough for us and there’s always something better soon to come.

Rain may spoil our day’s outdoor plans, but that doesn’t mean it’s an ugly day or that it’s a lost day. We need to take them one at a time. I hate summer days that are hot and humid because they limit my options and make me want to stay in air-conditioned comfort. But it’s still a distinctly separate day with its own identity, and I need to learn anew how to seize it and make the most of it.

The Latin phrase, “Carpe diem,” which means "seize the day," has become a cliché of sorts. I’m no Latin scholar, so I went looking for its origin, and learned that it was from a poem by the Roman poet, Horace.

The poem translates into English as follows:

Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what end the gods will grant to me or you, Leuconoe.

Don't play with Babylonian fortune-telling either.

It is better to endure whatever will be.

Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite — be wise, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes to a short period.

While we speak, envious time will have {already} fled.

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next.

As I’ve written here before, we need to learn to be here now, to approach our everyday surroundings as though we’re discovering them anew, as though we’re tourists in our own hometowns.

We should greet each day as though it’s our last, approach our own backyards as a frontier, and be with our friends as though we may never see them again. Let’s vow to fully appreciate the moment, regardless of what we’re doing: working or playing, laughing or crying.