I think this is particularly relevant in terms of climate change, for example. The thing about living in the moment is that there usually is another moment afterwards, and it can be useful to think a little about that moment. Even as we speak, envious time will have fled: seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the hereafter. That being said, I think it can be useful to consider Horace’s intention. dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Regardless of what Horace intended, that’s what it means now, and there’s no point swimming against the tide and trying to get everyone to use it differently.
More important though, is the fact that we’ve been using the phrase to mean live in the moment, do something crazy! for a long time now. He’s not saying the future won’t come rather that you can’t rely on getting to do what you want to do in the future. The only real difference is that the modern version emphasises enjoying the moment as you might not get to enjoy tomorrow, whereas Horace emphasises doing what you can now to make your future better. Both are about making the most of the present, and about not relying on the future. So, does this mean you’ve been getting it wrong all this time?įirst of all, the two senses of the phrase aren’t that different. Rather than not overthinking things and not being afraid to try something new or scary, he was suggesting we think about what we want and then not wait to make it happen.
Robert Herrick expressed a sharp sense of carpe diem in the first stanza of To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (included in Hesperides, published 1648). In that sense, it’s almost the opposite to how it’s used now. In English, the earliest known uses of the phrase carpe diem date to the early 19th century. He was basically saying that we shouldn’t put off till tomorrow what we can do today, but also, that we should think about what we really want, and make it happen now. He meant that we can’t rely on things to work out in the future, so we need to seize today and do what we can now to make the future that we want. OK, nothing surprising there, but that second part of the line gives us a clue as to how Horace meant the line in a slightly different way from how we use it now. (Seize the day trust tomorrow even as little as you may.) Here’s the particular line it’s from:Ĭarpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Where does it come from? From the Roman poet Horace, and specifically his work Odes. It translates as seize the day, and is used to mean live for the moment, don’t worry too much about the future and just enjoy yourself now. Oh man, he’s not going to tell us we’ve been using this wrong too, is he? He’s not going to take this inspirational phrase away from us!?īefore we do anything else, let’s have a quick look at what it means. To develop a theme of translating from Latin, I want to take a quick look at this phrase today.
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