the presence of elements that frustrate our efforts. Weâll deal with these in the following pages. Weâll then see what mechanisms trigger within us and sabotage one or all of the steps, preventing us to reach our goals.
[1] The complete translation of the Italian proverb would be âHe who lives hoping will die shittingâ
CARPE DIEM
"Gather ye rosebuds when it's time, that time you know that flies
and the same flower that blooms today tomorrow will wither. "
Walt Whitman
Carpe diem, that is, seize the day.
With this concept we start analyzing what stops or limits our success, our achievements and the positive outcome of our desires.
Carpe Diem is a Latin locution from the Latin poet Horace ( Odes, 1, 11, 8), and its literal translation is â seize the dayâ, often adapted in â seize the momentâ, a phrase which is now of everyday use thanks to the film Dead Poets Society. [1]
To be thorough, we should quote the full sentence, which goes on like this: â â¦quam minimum credula posteroâ, that is, â having the least amount of confidence in tomorrow as possibleâ.
It is an invitation to enjoy what one has and to live each day at our best, as we are not allowed to foresee future.
Such philosophy is based on the assumption that men cannot predict nor determine future.
Man can manage his own life and hence his own time.
As a matter of fact, in the previous verse Horace states: âDum loquimur, fugeritinvidaaetas", "While we talk, the greedy time would have long goneâ.
Every man can act only in and on the present, and is only by living that time that he must seize moments, chances and delights that show up today, without any restriction coming from hypothetical hopes or unsettling worries on the future.
This is a fundamental aspect, yet it is often left aside by most of the people.
If we had to ask about who we are and in what terms we would define ourselves, the description we would provide will be undoubtedly connected to our past and we would refer to a series of labels we or others came up with (or a mixture between the two).
Among these there will surely â and hopefully â be positive labels: âI am cleverâ; âI am politeâ âI am good at studying; I am good at playing footballâ, and so forth.
However, other labels (and this proves true for the greater part of the population) will have a negative or limiting character: âI am uglyâ, âI am not good at doing certain thingsâ, and so forth.
I will deal with this at length in the chapter about restrictive certainties.
Here, I would like to emphasize the importance of the present , unique and eternal moment, a key concept for religions in the Far East.
Time as a flow of events is a great mystery for us, a sort of dimension we think we cannot separate from.
In pure astrophysical terms, time is inseparable from the movement of the stars and, according to Einsteinâs Theory of Relativity â complementary to Galileoâs theory formulated in the 17th century â it constitutes the spacetime.
Thus, the movement of the stars creates time: we, as parts of the system, are bound by it without any chance to escape the mechanism.
Despite the fact that our life is made of a series of moments that, if put together, form the timeline we lived and will live, we actually live in some sort of âeternal presentâ: every moment of our life belongs to the past from the very moment we experience it, and it can be lived once again only through our conscience.
The same applies for the future, a series of logical and possible outcomes that exist only on a mental level.
We do are bound by time and there is no way we can avoid this.
Yet it is also true that we actually live in the present, the only existent and relevant dimension for us.
Once that moment is gone, as we said before, it belongs to the past and it ceases to exist on a physical level.
It continues its existence as an effect of what we did or thought.
Future, instead, exists only as a dimension in the realm of our thoughts and it exists only because we project our hopes or our concerns in it.
Hence, what we are is indeed the result of our past.
Yet, if we actually ARE the product of our past, this has ceased to exist and could possibily do so even within ourselves if we stop any connection with it and if we stop using it as a yardstick.
Future is determined by our actions and decisions in the present.
Despite its bond with uncertainty â what someone refers to as coincidence, whereas others call it âdestinyâ â it still remains a product of our actions in the present.
Hence, if I decide to write a book someday in the future but I do not open my computer or use my typewriter (or pen and paper for those who prefer handwriting), this future will never become a reality.
The opposite is true as well.
If everything leads us to believe that our future is to be taken for granted based on what we usually do (e.g. going to work every morning), that does not mean that we will automatically be at work tomorrow.
We may get sick, we might have a car crash or meet our life partner.
We could steer towards the airport instead of going to work and we might as well become a millionaire because we bought the right lottery ticket, and so forth.
