IDEA POST: 2/11/2010 "Carpe Diem"

"Carpe Diem"

Everyone knows the phrase that means, "Seize the Day". It is actually from a longer sentence Carpe Diem quam minimum credula postero. The whole sentence means "Seize the Day, trusting as little as possible in the future."

With the project I am working on this semester I am thinking about this idea of seizing the day and not wasting or taking for granted the time that is given to us. Also during this semester I am taking a class called Death: Myth and Reality. Basically in this class we are learning about death and how different cultures deal with things in different ways. I have learned and realized that we (human) fear death mostly above other emotions. Death is mysterious and undefinable and there is no way to know what happens to a person when they die. 

I remember watching scary shows when I was a kid, and there is one scary show that I watched that has always stuck in my head and it was about a person dieing but they were still conscious of what was going one even though the were pronounced dead. In my Religions class we are learning about the Buddhist religion and their beliefs about death. In the buddist religion they believe that a person is cycled as they die, and there is a period of waiting time that is kind like Limbo. Its all quite confusing but the point is that they believe that the cycle is bad and to be released for the cycle one must reach enlightenment through karma. We watched a movie about Buddist monks who read books the dying men to help them transcend through the cycle and they continue reading even after the person is dead because they believe that the "soul" stays in the body for a period after death. I thought is was interesting how they believed the dead man could still hear him and that I always remembered a similar story from my childhood. 

Anyways I ranted about all this because I have been thinking about the meaning of carpe diem in relation to the mystery of death. We fear death, therefore we appreciate every day more, but what would we think of life when we actually knew the facts about death. We know what happens to the body, yes, but we do not know what happens to the consciousness. 

ttp://www.myartspace.com/viewer/picture/?pictureid=mkhtrumnra1lbwz1

this link goes to a Myartspace page of an artist from Northern VA. The website would not let me copy it. It is a painting and the image reminds me of a certain kind of limbo, all the people look like souls waiting for their next placement in the world or their enlightenment.

This topic makes me question the importance of everyday, and it makes me question if it is really important or if your life on earth is just another kind of limbo waiting for the next path.