Carpe Diem This!

A funny thing happened around the time I turned fifty; and by funny I mean maddening and "not funny." Suddenly, the most ubiquitous piece of self-help advice was carpe diem, the admonition to live life to the fullest today because, Lord knows, our tomorrows are numbered.  This is very much like the time I decided I liked crumbled-up cookies in my ice cream and caused a revolution in the dairy industry, only with the added reminder that death is unavoidable thrown in.  Maybe I have the causality screwy -- I do seem to recall a popular musician of my youth inviting me to imagine all the people living for today -- but you have to admit that everywhere you look these days someone with a name like Shaktari Doprah is promoting a blog extolling the virtues of living in the moment.

They are right, of course.  The philosophy makes perfect sense, seeing as how we are completely powerless to change the past, and mostly unable to predict the future.  (I qualified that last statement because I think we all know Donald Trump is not going to be the 45th President of the United States.) So any amount of time, a limited resource, spent fretting over either the past or the future is wasted.  Personally, the aphorism that always resonated with me on this topic is "If you have one foot in yesterday and the other in tomorrow, then you're pissing on today."  There's just one problem with this whole carpe diem movement: it's literally not possible.

No, you can't seize the day any more than you can squash that drop of mercury or describe Lady Gaga's features.  How exactly are you supposed to do that?  In fact, every time I hear the phrase carpe diem it feels like I have a drill sergeant standing over my shoulder, commanding me to do it better, harder, faster.  "See that sunset?  ENJOY IT!  See your daughters?  HUG THEM!  TIGHTER!  Did you just waste that minute?  Well, did you, maggot?  I CAN'T HEAR YOU!  Drop and give me ten.  Speaking of which, did you work out today?"

I would like to take a moment here to clarify that I am not talking about the equally ubiquitous trend of mindfulness.  Mindfulness is not a drill sergeant pointing out your failings.  Mindfulness is your mother gently reminding you to "Pay attention, dear."  Mindfulness is what enables me to actually leave the house on a daily basis, confident that yes, I have remembered to turn off the burners on the stove and made sure that none of the cats is locked in the closet.

But I believe I may have found the real secret to living in the moment.  Ironically it came to me in a moment when I wasn't.

My husband and I were exploring a campsite on a day trip in Northern California.  Absolutely everything about the place caused a flood of sense memories from fifty, thirty... even ten years ago.  Sense memories are not to be confused with regular memories.  Regular memories are like looking through a picture album where images are familiar, but static and removed.  Sense memories are like spontaneous hallucinations where you not only recall the visuals of a time and place, but also your state of mind when you were there.  It's almost like reliving an experience.  Actors are trained to use personal sense memories to more realistically create the characters they portray; which kind of makes you wonder about Al Pacino.

As I wandered through the campsite, I indulged every sensation that washed over me.  I didn't only remember what it was like to be eight, eighteen, twenty-eight, I was eight, eighteen, twenty-eight.  And to my utter amazement, I felt... happy.  Contented.  This wasn't melancholy nostalgia.  This was unmitigated gratitude to be standing in the sunlight, surrounded by redwoods, listening to the rush of the river nearby.

And then the drill sergeant woke up.

"There you go again, scumbag!  Thinkin' about the past and pissin' all over the present." he commanded, dropping every 'g' he could.  "Be HERE!  Be here NOW!"

And before all those warm fuzzies evaporated completely, I had a flash of understanding.  I had been carpe-ing my diem quite well, thank you.  And the only thing that made that effort suddenly inadequate was forcing myself to acknowledge that I might never pass this way again (boy, maybe this trend has been around longer than I thought).  Only moments before I had been in a near state of bliss precisely because I was recalling an iteration of myself that either couldn't conceive of or never thought about my own mortality.

In other words, maybe the way to fully appreciate today is to take tomorrow for granted... like we used to yesterday.