Before you know it, you're going to die.
Life is passing you by right here, right now. You're in high school, the shallow end of the swimming pool of life. While you're studying for your test, while you're counting the number of things that matter in your life, you're dying. Each cell is previewing what it will be like. The cessation of consciousness. The world could end tomorrow. It could have ended today. And yet we waste our time in meaningless struggles against each other's intransitive ideals... against immutable nature. Why doesn't anyone see the big picture?
I feel like we're all stuck in a bubble and one day the bubble will pop and while everyone is gasping and crying out, we'll all be falling slowly. We are the future and yet right now all these children are being micromanaged by the College Board, or our parents, or the administrators. Maybe it's not like that for all of you, but for a large part of this generation it is. How are we going to be the future if we keep getting raised by the past. Why does it even matter when we're just going to die?
Carpe diem. Seize the em-effin day because it could be your last. One of these days it will be. If anything really matters in the long run (nothing does), it sure isn't schoolwork. It's not going to be where you go to college or how much money is in your bank account when they play "Amazing Grace" at your funeral. It's going to be something else: love or friendship or some sort meaningful activity... if such an activity exists.
Someone out there better be hoping that we aren't just sock puppets in some eternal farce, because I'm fairly sure we are.
20 comments:
Yep, we're all going to die. School and all of this is really just preparation. I know that every year i've spent in school and doing extracurriculars my mind has been opened exponentially. It's much harder to enjoy life and do good (i do not mean 'good' as an adjective, but as a noun. So go somewhere else grammar whores ;-).) without an education. We're being managed by the college board and our parents, etc. because they've been through this before us, don't worry our time will be soon, and we'll have a long run at shaping the world.
mmm... i hope i don't die tomorrow.
sorry, but this whole philosophy kinda bugs me. like yeah, you're gonna die, but i just don't think that that's the end. i hope the atheists don't butcher me for that. i feel like a carpe diem philosophy, instead of allowing you to experience everything in life, instead causes things to fall by the wayside. like people. i feel like maybe right now you feel good, but maybe later you'll wish you hadn't just acted out of self-gratification. i'm not saying to spend you're days as a celibate cloistered fish or something, i'm saying you need to take your life seriously despite whatever fun you have. i speak from experience. and when i die, hey, i won't feel a hopeless entrance into obscurity, i'll feel satisfied with what i've done in my life and be waiting for the next adventure. sounds nicer to me.
Think for second how the world would be if everyone acted solely upon instant selfgratification.
Kind of a crazy place eh?
Well carpe diem doesn't mean necessarily that you should always believe that instant gratification is the most important thing in life.
I just think that everyone takes money and school too seriously when it's really all just a game.
It's all a game, but too many people take it too seriously to make the stakes into something trivial.
just because people take a game seriously doesn't make it any less of a game.
or make it more meaningful.
I liked Dr. A.
I am overwhelmed by dying. I am terrified of it.
I meant "I liked, Dr. A"
not "I liked Dr. A"
I still think he's a pretty nice guy, too, though. But um... yeah, I don't think success is a game. I think it's fun.
I just don't want to die.
carpe diem isn't about instant gratification... It just means seize the moment, not for gratification. Living by that idea encourages you to take every opportunity to do your best, since there is no heaven.
yeah. but i say "necessarily mean you believe in instant gratification" because as i see it, seizing the day would be to always strive to act in a way that will make you the most happy for the longest you could be, instead of expecting happiness to come to you. I suppose that could be seen as instant gratification, but... there are shades of gray to consider. I think it would be incorrect to just blanketly say that to believe in carpe diem would be to believe in instant gratification, because many things could go under the header of carpe diem that would not necessarily make you instantly happy.
that got a little-longwinded. in short, i agree with you and was trying to say that earlier.
and to connect our two ideas, i think that doing your best would make necessarily make you happy.
If you aren't raised by the past who will you be raised by? What is the present but a creation of the past?
"Zorba came upon an old man planting an apricot seedling and asked why he, and old man, was planting a new tree. 'I live as though I would never die,'was his reply. 'And me, I live as though I might die tomorrow,' said Zorba, 'which one of us is right?'"
^^that pretty much sums up my argument.
I love you, doctoranonymous.
in the spirit of carpe diem, tomorrow i'm going to ask a girl instead of letting another day go by without asking her.
by the way, "still fighting it" is the best song of my life.
I would have to agree, Ben Folds certainly made a good song there.
haha he sure did...
sb?
Sometimes I wish I would die tomorrow, just to get it over with (And avoid having to complete certain homework assignments in the process). A very close person to me has fully accepted the idea of his own death; he is not afraid of it in any way and every day, it amazes me.
Guess this would have been more appropriately posted to the Ash Wednesday thread, but no matter.
I truly believe that people our age cannot fully comprehend and except their death without something wrong with them.
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