An occasional
reader of The Post responded to one
its efforts from a nom de plume email
address that included a combination Latin phrase “carpediem”. Curious, the old
man found that the phrase used came from a poem by pre-Christian Roman poet, Horace
(65 BC to 8BC), often considered the most accomplished lyric poet of that era.
Apparently the verse in question extolled the virtues of living for today
without worrying about the future, thus “seize the day” for Carpe Diem.
The phrase reminded the old man of an essay he published some twelve
years ago on Time and Ageing. Those
were years when I had already realized, much too late, how sadly I had sinned
in letting time pass me by. My thoughts of that time are perhaps even more
valid today when I hardly dare contemplate the future at all, while many of my
succeeding generations often appear to do little else but “seize the day” and
spend but little time thinking of tomorrow. I noted in 1999 that the Boomer
generation saved little for a rainy day, produced a lower next generation
population with both parents working to pay taxes and keep up an affluent lifestyle.
Governments increased immigration to make up the difference. Ever more welfare
goodies, ever more rapid “growth” was necessary to sustain the system.
Philosophers and poets have long thought of the nature of time and its
passage. Augustine in the early days of the Roman Church suggested that past
and future do not exist at all and the present has no “extent of duration”.
Pascal, in the 17th Century thought we were so dissatisfied with the
present that “we anticipate the future as
too slow in coming … or we recall the past to stop its too rapid flight. … For
the present is generally painful to us. … Let each one examine his thoughts,
and he will find them all occupied with the present and the future. … The past
and present are our means; the future alone is our end. … So we never live, but
we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable
we should never be so.”
Since my early retirement now nearly 30 years ago I spent much time
examining my thoughts as Pascal suggested. I have been dismayed at the rapid
disappearance of my more youthful “present”. As a boy I could not wait to be
bigger, more powerful, better off, more successful, more this, more that and
preferably someplace else. As a teenager I doubt if I ever knew what I wanted,
either in the present or the future but I could not wait until I finished
school, became “independent” and found a mate of my own. That stage finally
came about through some effort and a lot of help but without taking any real advantage
of the great scope of resources that “present” freely
offered. I could not wait to be “successful” so I could provide for mate and
offspring. So I kept looking, thinking of the future, of security for me and
mine, of retirement, of everything but what was there for me to enjoy in the
here and now. Before I knew it, the children were gone, the years consumed with
nothing but efforts to get them into their “future”.
Time since the old man’s retirement seems to have gone in a flash. My “present”
has lasted much longer than anticipated and though my physical assets have
deteriorated more rapidly in recent years, I still have the ability to “contemplate”
the present sufficiently to be able to prepare an occasional issue of this
journal. Often the result turns out a contemplation of the past, largely
because the scope of my social present gets more limited all the time. All my
speculations have done nothing to solve the mysteries of time and ageing.
Perhaps after all, Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
in this fragment from the famous soliloquy, said it as thoughtfully as anyone:
For in that sleep of death
what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off
this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s
the respect
That makes calamity of so long
life;
For who would bear the whips
and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the
proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love,
the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and
the spurns
That patient merit of the
unworthy takes,
When he himself might his
quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would
fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a
weary life,
But that the dread of
something after death,
The undiscover’d country from
whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles
the will,
And makes us rather bear
those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we
know not of?
