Carpe Diem, Rediscovered.

The past is a history, tomorrow’s a mystery and today’s a gift. That’s why they call it the present.

Many people have always cried out, “carpe diem!” which I understood as Latin for “seize the day”, but I’ve never really lived or truly understood the meaning until I read a semblance of this article (ironically I lost the link to it because I speed read it). It is about “living in the present”, and I found myself thinking about the point after.

The point is, if one acknowledges that whatever happened in the past cannot be changed, and there’s no point in worrying about the future because it hasn’t happened yet, one can and should truly just live in the now.

That revelation struck me because I found myself guilty of thinking about the past, about what ifs, regretting certain actions or things. And also dreaming about what can happen next in my life, what would be nice. But all of that is just overindulgent escapism and precious time lost.

Living in the now means to shed or forget about the transgressions that people or events have against you in the past, be it a minute ago, yesterday, last month or even last year, because it’s over, and it didn’t matter any more. And that made me feel infinitely lighter.

It also means not thinking about how the world is going to turn to shit in the future because that’s still anybody’s guess. I made myself quit worrying about what’s going to happen. because it’s going to happen whether I want to or not.

What I have been doing is to savour being in the “now” — to me it means focusing my entire energy and being in the present moment living it to it’s fullest. It means devoting 100% of one’s mental faculties on whatever I had set out to do, be it chatting with friends, creating a presentation or even while reading so every word and detail is absorbed.

A lot of times we don’t even listen or see properly. If we can really just do that, one might just find new dimensions or observations which can be easily overlooked between alternating to your phone, the TV or other distractions.

Be mindful of what’s happening now, and let it happen.