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Peeks and Piques! carpe
diem: “seize the day.”
We’ve all been admonished to do so, but when things
are rosy and all is going well, we rarely take this common phrase seriously
enough to actually act on it. ‘Strike the iron while it’s hot’; ‘make
hay while the sun shines’; ‘prendre la balle au bond’— all so familiar, all so taken for granted! I
wish I could relate that I’ve always heeded the warning, always done the
right thing. Oh sure, I’ve put it into my writings — my poems, my
essays — even thought I’d been cognizant of the warning when I attempted
to capture fleeting light in paintings. But, then, every-day things come
along, and I fall easily back into taking time for granted. We all do,
I know that. Still, we are faced with reminders from time to time —
might even diligently try to hew the line for a day or so. I’m reminded
of a professor of expository writing I had the pleasure of studying with
back in my college days….she was known as a “hard marker” but I found
that she had much to offer this budding writer. A “late bloomer”, I was
already in my thirties when I took my first course with her, and unlike
my younger classmates, welcomed her rigorous instruction. After three
courses with her, we became friends and I can still recall her confiding
in me that she could not wait until she could retire to “read all the
books I’ve put aside for that day”. Well, the day came and she had retired
to a teacher’s home in upstate New York. We corresponded and one of the
things she had most regretted about the retirement home was that she was
the only college professor there, the others mostly retired from grade
and high schools. “I have no one to converse with!” she plaintively wrote
in one of her letters. To make matters worse, she was shortly thereafter
afflicted with an eye disease that prevented her from doing any reading
at all. I traveled up to visit her once in awhile, reading to her from
her coveted cache of “to read” books neatly arranged on shelves in her
tiny sitting room. Alas, my own life was catching up to me, my new job
as an English teacher demanding more of my time, and the visits soon ceased.
I’d learned that she quietly passed away a few years later and, if she
had not learned the lesson of ‘carpe diem’ well, neither had I. I’m sure
I could have found more time to spend with her, but then there was always
tomorrow, or next month, or when the weather was better. Whatever she
was getting out of my visits, I’m convinced that my rewards were much
greater, since I also was getting the chance to read those books we always
intend to read. Through her, I became acquainted with Herodotus, Thucydides,
Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Aurelius, and a great many more. Through her,
my early years as a “hard hat” were slowly being mellowed into, if not
refined culture, at least into a credible façade of polish and literacy.
I still can call up to memory her rebukes when I slipped into sloppy writing
— especially when I’m pressed by a deadline that persuades me to
sometimes take the easy road. After all, who’s going to notice? Well,
thanks to that professor, me for one. So, carpe diem. Paint that picture; write that
poem; practice that dance; compose that melody; sing that song; perfect
that role…we simply do not know what lies in store for us beyond tomorrow.
The body is a frail thing, subject to the “slings and arrows” of life,
and we never know when or in what manner incapacitation may visit us to
cut short our good intentions. Strike! Strike while the iron is still
hot! |