Carpe Diem - Revised Edition

Daily Diary of a Sensitive Soul

If you’ve read this blog from the beginning, you may have noticed that I am fixated on the notion of carpe diem! Having survived so many early losses in my life, I walk among the worried well, those of us waiting impatiently for the next shoe to drop, as they say. I’m expecting the unexpected, the twist in the road, the moment that changes everything. And, sadly, I am still surprised on a daily basis when things actually do work out.

To me, carpe diem is loaded with all that pressure to seize the day because it could be your last. This is quite a burden to carry around day in and day out. And because I routinely fall short of such lofty expectations, I pile on the added weight of disappointment as well, which just adds to the pressure, ad infinitum. Not a hamster wheel I would recommend for anyone, yet here I am spinning around.

I recently came across a clip of Suleika Jaouad, author of The Book of Alchemy, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert, while doom scrolling on social media, and it was one of those life-changing, aha moments therapists call a reframe. In it she said, that defining carpe diem as if you are living each day as your last, is not sustainable, and so she has decided, and highly recommends, living each day as if it is your first instead. Like a child full of wonder.

This simple distinction flipped my brain into reverse like a DJ manually disrupts the flow of a song on an album on a turntable, ert, ert, ert. What, what, what? And just like that, the heavy load I’ve been carrying on my shoulders most of my life fell to the ground. The memory of the innocence of childhood washed over me—the excitement to wake up and go outside to play presented itself again, as if to say, remember me?

Being on the downhill side of life, as I have said before, can easily shift your focus to what hurts, what’s no longer working, what’s wrong, etc. Older people share tales of woe regarding health scares right alongside comments about the weather, without missing a beat. Health scares are a reality among older people. It’s a tiresome reality.

Perhaps the process of facing into aging and—dare I say it—death—requires some discussion—some tiptoeing toward the inevitable. We also talk about our bucket lists—what we’d like to do with what time we have left. Here, though, we’re just guessing. And so we make plans for as long as we can. We try to beat the clock.

But what if we shift our thinking to simply enjoying every day without this heavy focus on the future—or lack there of? What if the adventure begins every morning, every day, without this dreary focus on getting it all done before it’s too late? What if each day is its own canvas, its own painting?

I’m clearly excited about this new idea, this reframe. Even that line I love from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese feels ominous now: What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life has always carried a cautionary tone for me. Again, with the added, before it’s too late. And now, instead, the invitation is simply to let this go.

Humor me here, but can you relate to this new idea—living with curiosity and wonder instead of doom and gloom? Perhaps you are already there. Perhaps you expect to live a long life, like your parents. Perhaps you are looking forward to those golden years. Or perhaps you are somewhere in the middle, getting by and making the best of it. Either way, I’m going to stick myself to this new idea like a bee on a flower—going all in.

Asking clients what some of their favorite things were to do as a kid has always been a useful question to help get them out from under their problem saturated story, and remind them of their agency, enthusiasm and resilience. People’s faces often light up over the simplest things, sharing memories that took hold and still bring a smile to the face.

I can still picture my dad walking through the door on a hot summer day with a bucket of vanilla ice cream and a gallon jug of Dad’s Root Beer. My brothers and I would scramble out of our chairs and yell in unison, root beer floats! And my mom’s triumphant face when she would present to each of us our annual chosen birthday cake, the right number of candles already lit as she set it on the table. And I remember catching fire flies, putting them in a glass jar, and poking holes in the lid just so with a hammer and screw driver, then setting the jar on the nightstand by my bed as I went to sleep.

I cherish these memories. But the good times ended early, and the bad times edged them out, claiming more real estate at the center of my life. My innocence, my wonder, my faith in the future got interrupted so suddenly, I haven’t fully realized until now just how much shock I’ve still been holding onto. Shock and grief, to be more precise.

It happened on a Friday in September. My father kissed me on the cheek that morning while I was still sleeping, like he did every morning before work. Some mornings I would be awake already but still pretend to be asleep just to be sure I’d still get that kiss. My parents were both teachers at nearby schools and often left the house before we did. But after school that day, our uncle was uncharacteristically sitting in the kitchen when my brothers and I got home.

“There’s been an accident,” he said. “Your mother’s at the hospital now. You’re all to wait here.”

If he said any more words than that, I don’t remember them. I scurried about the house, unable to sit still. I sat on the stairs a while and prayed to a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall, but I wasn’t much of a believer. Hours went by like days before our mother came though the kitchen door and announced, “He didn’t make it. He was riding one of our horses in the homecoming day parade before the big game when the horse got spooked. He was thrown off into a utility pole and died from internal bleeding they did not discover in time. He said to tell you he loves you.”

She said it as if she had rehearsed it, as if she was far away, a scream that sounded like a whisper. I can’t tell you what happened next. How ever many days there were between that moment and the funeral, and all the details, all the contents within them, remain hidden. Even the funeral, after all these years, is still a little hazy. And it would become clear over time that what was left of our family had shattered into way too many pieces that day to ever be put back together again.

Looking back, I can tell this story now with the stretched out, dry desert landscape of distance over time. Yes, it was long ago, September 1975. But its impact has been life-long. My father was thirty-nine. I remember him complaining about turning forty in a few more months. Back then forty sounded old. But it is not. It is young. It is too soon. It is unfair. And it is life.

As someone fully on board with the view that obstacles are the way, not in the way, I trust that turning toward these difficult feelings, no matter how painful, will ultimately bring relief. Letting myself see and feel into another layer of the shock and grief I’ve been holding onto my whole life has allowed more to soften and release.

This pressure to maximize my time while I am alive has got to go. It is truly not sustainable. And the paradox is that holding on so tightly chokes the life out of life along the way. One foot on the gas, one foot on the break doesn’t get you very far. There is so much possibility in one day at a time. Maybe one wild and precious day is more accurate.

Perhaps to those who know me, especially lately, I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer. There’s plenty to be concerned about right now in these United States. But I’ve always been more of a Piglet than an Eeyore. Piglet is more my true nature.

And still I know, life is more about yes-and, than either-or. Yes this and yes that. Yes painful and yes beautiful. It’s not either good or bad, it’s both-and. Letting myself come closer to the middle, closer to curiosity and wonder, breathes new life into my heavy definition of carpe diem. It softens the breaks on possibility and allows me to approach the day with the enthusiasm of a child. Here, everything is new. Time to go outside and play my friends.