Carpe diem - seize the day.
We’re sitting in the sun on the patio, soaking up the warmth and enjoying the view of the Mediterranean below us. After we’ve finished our tasks we should sit here and have a glass of wine in the January sunshine and watch the cirrus clouds float past.
We don’t have much to do. A trip to the grocery store for yoghurt and oranges, maybe tomatoes and bread as well. But the sun won’t be here by then. It will disappear behind the mountain at three o’clock. It won’t be dark, or even dusk, and it will still be warm, but the caressing rays will be gone. We’ll be able to to see the sea, but it won’t sparkle.
So seize the moment. There’s an open bottle of Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon. We have olives and cheese and J’s made humus and a sardine mixture. The sun is on our backs. The sea is a deep sapphire. The perfect time is now.
I’m no Latin scholar and J’s Latin lessons were a very long time ago. I’ve always accepted the translation of carpe diem as seize the day, but look it up. It’s from Horace’s odes, and apparently a more accurate translation would be “pluck” - as in picking fruit at the moment of ripeness:
WhetherJove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;
This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore.
Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?
In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb'd away.
Seize the present
Pluck the perfect moment.