A brief dose of thinkingness...

[usernamenumber]

My comment about contentedness, (over-)scheduling and such in my last post reminded me of something that's been kicking around my head since this morning:

If I have a motto, or at least something I aspire to treat as a motto, it's probably that Jason Webley quote that many of you have heard me cite before:

"Every one of us is damned until we start to understand that living is to gorge ourselves at our own wakes"

The problem with this is that, as powerful a "carpe diem", or at least "do not waste time on things that do not make you happy", message as it is to me, I'm too practical to try to live by that alone. If you truly gorge yourself, living each day as though it were your last, then statistically speaking you're more likely to end up un-prepared for tomorrow than to die fulfilled. Sometimes being fulfilled in the long-run requires doing things that are unpleasant in the short-run, and I figure the most effectively way to achieve a net-fulfilment in life is to strike a balance between the two. So I decided that I needed something with which to counter-balance that sentiment: a similarly positive, if desperate, message that acknowledges the importance of the future, not just the present. This morning, with the help of an English-to-Latin dictionary, I think I finally settled on one:

"Carpe Cras" ("Sieze The Morrow")

I think that if ever I were to get a tattoo, it would be two: one of each of these.

Ok, now back to work. For reals this time.

Comments

[rubicantoto.livejournal.com]

Carpe Diem and Carpe Cras can be summarized geekily as car and cdr (AFAIK, LISPs have the only recognizably canonical linked list terminology for "the value right here" and "the rest of the list, even if it's infinite", so as to be suitable for these mottos).

Now, if I were high enough to really riff on your idea, I'd say we need to find a way to write car and cdr so they have rotational symmetry, and then use them to form the outlines of a yin-yang symbol. That'd be a totally ridiculous tattoo. Of course, I'm semi-compulsive, so I still had to say it.

That is hands down my favorite of Webley's songs. So apocalyptic. But then again, I had the fortune of first seeing him at Burning Man in a pavilion tent made of long triangular flaps lashed together, and just as night was just setting in the winds were whipping the flaps around, so of course there was something resonant about the song's message of carpe diem/fly your freak flag high/the end is nigh.

[darkoni]

I like it.

Marginalien und Fußnoten (auch: mehrere Despektierlichkeiten):

[(Anonymous)]

a)"Every one of us is damned until we start to understand that living is to gorge ourselves at our own wakes"

The problem with this is that, as powerful a "carpe diem", or at least "do not waste time on things that do not make you happy", message as it is to me, I'm too practical to try to live by that alone. If you truly gorge yourself, living each day as though it were your last': I do not think the message in the song is so much 'carpe diem' or 'gorge yourself at your own wakes!', to me it seems rather 'memento mori' and 'try to understand that you have to die, and that can be pretty rough at times, and - no, I don't have an answer, either, because noone has'- I am quite reminded of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGQv4kHxTsg&feature=PlayList&p=4781AF2F346E9A66&index=0

b)nice theory about the balance between instant/delayed fulfillment. Granted, Dr. Freud came up with it first. But then, I bet he never used an English-Latin dictionary to come up with cool Latin slogans. Mottos. Mottoes. Whatever. I don't speak Latin.

c)'Carpe Diem Cras' though, as the internet will have it: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Carpe%20Diem%20Cras

d)I think tattooed messages in languages one has not fully mastered are a very bad idea, but that is my personal opinion.