In addition to the literature class I mentioned last week, my appreciation of poetry couldn’t help but be shaped by the fictional John Keating in Dead Poets Society, which came out in my junior year of high school. I think that Sean and I saw that movie at least a half-dozen times during our last two years of high school, and we normally managed to drag a few of our friends along with us to see it.

Now, movies have always been secondary to me. I’m more of a book type of person. However, for my money few scenes are as powerful as the one where Robin Williams takes his class out to the trophy case and gives them a valuable life lesson

They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? – - Carpe – - hear it? – - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

Since the movie came out around the same time that I was in my advanced literature class, there was a bit of crossover. I remember how thrilled our teacher was that a mainstream movie actually made poetry look….well, cool. In fact, in many ways we viewed Mr. Keating as an analog for our teacher. Which I’m sure he loved.

Those lines have always stuck with me, and I’ve always fallen back on it when things aren’t going as well as they should. In a funny bit of synchronicity, my grandfather told me his version of carpe diem. Namely, “your worst day above ground is better than your best day below.”

Today we go back to Horace, the man who gave us the phrase.

Odes 1.11

Don’t ask (it’s forbidden to know) what end the gods have granted to me or you, Leuconoe.

Don’t play with Babylonian fortune-telling either. How much better it is to endure whatever will be!

Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite — be wise, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have {already} fled

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.

– Horace