CELOTEH KRAMELIA

I've got this 'carpe diem' phrase a few years ago from the movie "Dead Poets Society". It's a latin expression that means 'seize the day'. It's an exhortation to live life to the fullest, getting the most out of each individual day. It was taken from the latin poem by Horace, in the end of the poem he wrote : carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.. means 'seize the day, and place no trust in tomorrow.'

If we take a survey of one hundred people, probably all of them would say that is what they want from their own life. No one wants life to be mediocre, at least not many are willing to admit it. By nature, we want our lives to be full.

Unfortunately, many times we get so caught up in the details of day-to-day living that we just don't have time to seize the day. We've got deadlines and commitments, problems and priorities, distractions and obstacles, and though we really want more fulfillment from every single day, it just doesn't seem to be within our grasp.

Well, I do believe that Carpe Diem is very important as a philosophy of life, so i'll try to put it an easy explanation within our grasp. Here goes, hope you can learn to "seize the day" and live life to the fullest, no matter how hectic your life may be, by these three simple steps to living a more fulfilling life. :)

1. Find Your Purpose

In order for a country, business, organization, family, or individual to be successful, they must first know exactly what their purpose is.

If I were to ask everyone who read this note, "what is your purpose in life?" I would probably get several different answers. "Be a good wife or husband, be a good mother or father, do well in my job, be a good doctor, teacher, businessman, and so on." Those answers would be good, but they are all secondary purposes. The question is what is your primary purpose in life? In other words, what is your reason for living? Everything in creation has a primary purpose, or a reason for existing. For anyone or anything to be successful, it must fulfill that purpose.

Here's an easy question. What is the primary purpose of a pen? The answer, of course, is to write. A $1,000 solid-24-carat-gold-with-swarovski-pen that is out of ink may be pretty to look at, but it is a failure as a pen; it is not fulfilling its purpose. It is useless. When it comes time to endorse your paycheck you'll bypass that gold-swarovski pen, and use a faster (name of a cheap pen brand) that works instead.

Just as a pen has a primary purpose, every individual that God has created has a primary purpose. Our lives will be without meaning--we'll be failures--unless we find out what is our purpose-our reason for living.

2. Forget The Past

There are two elements of the past that we must forget.

a. Forget the Bad.
Maybe you've had a bad experience or maybe you did something long ago that you regret. Maybe the memories keep coming back to haunt you, keeping you from living a full life today. We must forget the past. It's over. It's done. It's gone. It cannot hurt you anymore. There's nothing you can do to change it. You can only forget it and move on.

Once, there's a soccer player (goalkeeper) who had done a terrible blunder in the first half, that caused his team suffer a lost. In the locker room at half time, he sat in the corner with his face buried in his hands, crying. The room was silent. The Coach didn't make his usual half-time speech, but shortly before the team was to take the field for the second half, he said, "The starting team is going back onto the field to begin the second half." The whole team left the locker room except for the goalkeeper, who remained in the corner with his face in hands. "I can't do it, Coach," he said. "I can't play. I've ruined the team." The coach said, "Get up, Son. The game is only half over. You belong on the field."

Guess what? Our game is only half over. Regardless of the past, we still have the rest of the game to play. God is willing to forget about the mistakes of the first half. He expects us to do the same.

But not only that, aside of forgetting the bad, in order to forget the past, we also have to forget the good.

b. Forget the Good.
You've probably heard the Bruce Springsteen song, "Glory Days," about the guy who can't quit thinking about all the fun he had back in high school. He says, "time slips away and leaves you with nothing but boring stories of glory days.."

Many people zero-in on one good period of time in their life, and spend the rest of their days reliving the past. Maybe it was high school or college, or back when he were young, or any other special time. It's always a temptation to live in the past, especially if it is good. They love to talk about the glory days, becoz that's all they have.

Well, just so you know, a good past was not in itself enough to guarantee a meaningful future.

I will not live in the past. My reason for living is to be beneficial for others, as much as possible, and whatever happened yesterday, good or bad, is now ancient history. I will live for today.

3. Face the Present

It is easy to live in the past. It is easy to dream away the future. It's a real challenge to face the present, becoz it means we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury of saying, "One of these days I'll do something about my temper.. my commitment to God.. my health.. my responsibility to my family.." and so on.

Facing the present means that we choose to live life it comes to us day by day. Not in the past, not in the future, but right here and right now.


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God does not want us to waste our lives away. He wants us to "seize the day" and live every day of our lives on purpose. He's given us a reason for living. It's not going to happen yesterday, so we must forget the past. We can't put it off till tomorrow, becoz tomorrow might never comes. It has to happen right now, and it will-if we will seize the day and make it our own. :)

Sumber : Hamdiy Hope