"Carpe Diem" is Bullshit

I’ve always thought "seize the day" was bullshit. It’s one of those things movies and authors have been selling us for decades, making us believe it’s the answer to everything. They wrap it up in pretty, neat packages with catchy lines, acting like that’s all you need to fix whatever is wrong with you. "Carpe diem," they say. "Live in the moment," they urge, as if one click of the clock can transform everything you’re feeling. But it never works that way, does it? Because when you try to "seize the day," when you think you’re going to somehow grab the day by the throat and live it (really live it), it slips right through your fingers. You get caught in the rush of what’s next, what’s coming up, what you haven’t done yet. And in all that noise, you miss what’s actually here.

I think back to a specific day in Paris when I was 16, standing outside the Musée d'Orsay, staring at the massive, golden clock. The intricate gears, the soft tick of time slipping by—it was like I was watching time itself. Everyone around me was moving, their lives rushing ahead. I remember thinking, "This is the moment. This is what it means to be alive." But the thing is, I wasn’t really living in that moment. I was looking at a clock, focused on the idea of time, as though it was something I could grasp, something that could hold me. I missed the conversation with my friends who were standing beside me, the feel of the warm spring air, the stunning architecture. I was too busy thinking about time to actually feel it.

The irony is that in the pursuit of "seizing" the day, we become so focused on the idea of it that we overlook the day itself. There’s this almost inherent contradiction in it, how can you be truly present if you’re always measuring your moments against some imagined future? We’re taught to believe that a perfect life hinges on moments that are dramatic, that are full, as if somehow living fully means being constantly overwhelmed by significance. But life, in its truest form, isn’t about constant moments of grandeur. It’s about the spaces in between, the quiet, unnoticed fragments that, when strung together, make up the thread of your existence. You can’t seize something that’s already moving. And maybe that’s the trap: trying to grab at something that doesn’t want to be held.

It’s not that I’m against trying to make the most of things. It’s just that the idea that you can wake up, look at the world, and suddenly feel like you’re grasping everything you should be? I don't think that's real. You can’t live like that. Not every day is going to feel like some life-changing moment, not every second is going to be bursting with meaning. The truth is, the more you chase meaning in every second, the less you’re actually experiencing it. You become obsessed with the future, the perfect version of yourself that’s supposed to emerge once you’ve ticked off enough boxes. But every goal you meet only pulls you further from what matters, because you start living in the theoretical, the should be, rather than the is. And what’s left is a constant hunger, an insatiable need for something more, always searching for the next step in a race you’re not even sure you want to be running.

And so it goes, this relentless pursuit of time, of being ahead of it, of trying to bend it to our will. We treat time like it’s a commodity, something to be spent wisely, like it’s some currency that’s somehow running out. But the problem with this view is that we forget to live it. It becomes less about being alive and more about achieving life, about meeting some abstract standard. We want to be productive, efficient, always moving forward. But what’s the point of moving forward if you’re not actually living in the moment you’re in? We’re always looking for the next stage, the next “level,” and in the process, we forget to appreciate the very moments that build those milestones.

I’ve spent years trying to live in the moment and it always feels like I’m too far ahead, always out of sync with what’s really going on. Instead of living in the day, I’m trapped in my head, planning out my life like it’s a spreadsheet. What should I be doing by this age? What’s next? How do I make sure I don’t miss the "important stuff"? The result is that I’m not in the moment: I’m anticipating what’s coming next, and that constant mental juggling only keeps me feeling like I’m falling behind. But it’s not just me. It’s a collective condition we all seem to share, this obsession with time, with getting it right before it’s too late, as though there’s some finite measure to this thing we call life.

There’s a certain tension there, an anxiety that grips you when you’re constantly trying to measure up. You start living for something else, for some future version of yourself that’s supposed to make sense of it all. But the more you chase it, the more you lose yourself in the process. It becomes a cycle, a self-perpetuating narrative where the "next thing" is always the thing that will complete you. But then the "next thing" arrives, and you feel... nothing. It’s just another step, and you realize, almost too late, that you’ve been sprinting for years toward something that doesn’t even exist. You think if you can just do enough, be enough, it’ll all finally come together, and yet it never does. And when you stop, really stop, and let everything settle, you begin to realize that maybe the whole point is to stop trying so hard to get ahead.

The truth is, we’re all running from time, trying to outpace it, thinking we can control it. We imagine that if we just do this, everything will fall into place, but we’re wrong. The more we try to control time, the more it slips away. Time is a river you can’t dam up, a tide that doesn’t wait for your permission to pull you in. You can’t outrun it, you can’t manipulate it into something that fits your plans. You can’t force the future to arrive on your terms. The more we chase it, the more we realize we’re not just running from time, we’re running from ourselves.

And then, it dawns on you: time is never going to meet your expectations.

It doesn’t exist on your terms, doesn’t move to the rhythm you set for it. The future won’t ever fit perfectly into the box you’ve designed for it. And the present, in its stark, raw form, is the only thing you’ve got. You’ve spent years trying to mold it, trying to shape it into something more manageable, but it won’t be contained. Time is a force, not an asset to be accumulated, and there’s no escaping it by pushing harder or wishing it away. The only thing left is to stop trying to dominate it and start letting it unfold, as it does, without your interference. It moves, endlessly, whether you’re ready or not.

All you can do now is let it be.