Unfortunately, many of us spend their lives in a kind of demo mode, building up a puzzle of achievements, hoping that once all the pieces fit together – they will reveal an idealistic picture of happiness and full satisfaction. The Latin word carpe translates literally as ‘pluck’, in reference to picking fruits (deriving from the Greek k arpos ‘fruit’) and diem as ‘day’, thus Carpe Diem could be rendered as ‘pluck the day when it is ripe, harvest.’Īnd we all have been there, picturing ourselves happy and content at some future moment – once we finish a work project or retire, pay off our student debt or mortgage, once the kids grow up, and the list goes on…. Usually Carpe Diem is translated into English as ‘seize the day,’ but its meaning is much more nuanced than that. The poem is a rebuke to a young and pretty woman, called Leuconoë, who is anxious about the future, and advises her to rather accept her fate and make the best of the present moment: “Be wise, strain the wine and since life is brief, prune back far-reaching hopes! Even while we speak, envious time has passed: pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow!” The Carpe Diem aphorism was coined by the Roman lyric poet Horace in Poem 11 in the first book of his collected Odes (23 B.C.). Carpe Diem – Word of the day – EVS TranslationsĬonsidering that Latin is declared a dead language, it is truly fascinating how an expression – that is more than 2000 years old – can still resonate just as strongly today.
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