These days, in a world where Latin is quasi-dead, carpe diem<\/i> seems to be the motto. Everybody seems to live the day \u2013 in every meaning of the expression. Young people in debt because they lived the day too hard, old people forced to work because they didn’t think there will be a tomorrow are examples of misuse of this philosophy. Despite my better judgment, I have to recognize, it makes me feel quite inadequate. Slave of the opinion others have about me, I was ashamed to admit I don’t live too much in the present. Today I muster the courage to step out of a closet… probably in another one, since we move from closet in closet (I guess that the trick is not to die in one).
\nEven so, my analytic thinking says I am not doing anything wrong. My present is not interesting at all. It moves at an even rate with its little joys and upsets. My future? My future was, as somebody said in a radio essay I listened last year (I apologize for my poor memory), amputated when I divorced. Now and then, I catch a glimpse of it but then fog covers the vague shapes.
\nWhat is wrong with living in the past?<\/b> What is wrong, when times are tough, to cuddle back with your parents on a Saturday evening in their bed and watch a black-and-white western movie and then go content that Sunday follows and that I can sleep as much as I want? So what if my nostrils fill with the smell of steak and mashed potatoes and pickles and I read \u201cThe Three Musketeers\u201d, or I laugh my ass off watching “Tom and Jerry”, while waiting for Mom to call us in the kitchen for the weekend lunch? What is the crime in remembering the smell of lime trees embracing my street in a warm spring night, after I just returned from the student campus where I met my girlfriend?
\nWe all go places where we felt happy, safe, loved. Some go to Disneyland, I visit the space of my memories. I sift through them and then, when I discover a warm and fuzzy one, I nest in it and let it carry me through the neither-interesting-nor-promising present.
\nMemory-triggers very seldom make sense. I listen to Gloria Gaynor and I remember visiting my cousins \u2013 not having siblings, they were my brothers. I remember the nights I slept over and we kept yapping until midnight, whispering so our parents would not come in. Not that we ever listened \u201cI will survive\u201d together. I smell the freshly-cut grass and I remember the feeling I was getting at my grandfather\u2019s place, in the country, in a cold spring, hidden behind the stove. I remember the smell of burnt wood.
\nWhy is the present so great? We have a lunch with somebody we love, it\u2019s peaceful, the conversation is great, and one sees glitters of love in the other\u2019s eyes. It\u2019s good but it will be a long time before being able to refer to this lunch as one that brought the most happiness in your life. Watch a movie \u2013 it\u2019s good, it\u2019s titillating, intellectually stimulating but one will have to waste hundreds of hours lost in stupid productions before acknowledging that this movie was one of the best.
\nLive in the present? Buying the CDs of all the latest fashion bands just to realize within 12 months, once the craze passed that they are worth even less than the plastic used in their fabrication? No, thank you!
\nPersonally, I don’t see any value in present – it’s a fad, it’s a moment and then it’s gone, it’s without memory and it’s made for people who want to live without history and without future.
\nI promised myself I will shed my shame of not being aligned with this \u201ccarpe diem\u201d society. I will sleep myself in lost times and wait for a spring where, hopefully, I will be able to love more the present through the remembrance of the feelings that crush me today, the past. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These days, in a world where Latin is quasi-dead, carpe diem seems to be the motto. Everybody seems to live the day \u2013 in every meaning of the expression. Young people in debt because they lived the day too hard, old people forced to work because they didn’t think there will be a tomorrow are…<\/span><\/p>\n