Carpe Diem
“Carpe, carpe diem, seize the days boys”, Keating shouted to his students. “Make your lives extraordinary!” The movie was Dead Poets Society. Keating was played by an extraordinary Robin Williams. And if there was ever a call to action, this was it.
I am writing a book on quotations. I have a chapter called Action Items and it begins with the deservedly immortal carpe diem line. It ends, however, with the feeling that, when it comes to action, you are darned if you do and damned if you don’t.
It was the Roman poet Horace, or as his mother called him, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (as in Quintus Horatius Flaccus, put away your toys right now!) who originally penned those words in the ode of the same name. He was already and as always looking ahead. “Carpe diem, quam nimimum credula postero!” he said. “Since life is brief, prune back far-reaching hopes. Even while we speak, envious time has passed. Pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow!”
Horace (65-8 B.C.) was an epicurean and plucking the day was very much an epicurean thing to do.
Getting To It
So, how do you seize the day? Well, first, like the bird, you start early. It is clear that starting is the only way to get to finishing; you don’t get done if you don’t get to the doing.
The good new is: “well begun is half done”. That quote is variously ascribed to Pythagoras (of right angle triangle fame) who really said, “The beginning is half the whole” and to Plato who, in his weighty and wordy dialogue, Laws, wrote: “Beginning is the half of every task”. It was also attributed to a number of Romans, including the poet Ausonius, the orator Cicero and, again, Horace (who clearly got around).
What advice do the sages have for those about to embark on a course of action? Get a move on! It starts with a couple of Chinese proverbs, “Be not afraid of going slowly; be only afraid of standing still” and “A man grows most tired while standing still.” The idea is picked up, with a twist of lemon, by success guru Arnold Glasow: “Many a false step is taken by standing still”. Your choice.
At some point along the road to success, however, you are going to be confronted by an obstacle or reach a complete impasse. The inspired and those paid to inspire on Sunday morning infomercials and, like Glasow, senior management retreats, will advise you to simply press on. Climb over, go around or walk through. You cannot keep a committed person from success, they say. Place stumbling blocks in his way and he takes them for stepping stones.
Not so, goes a Hindustani proverb. In fact: Men trip not on mountains; they stumble over stones. Virtually the same observation comes from the Chinese: Men trip not on mountains; they trip on molehills.
Perhaps things would go better if people would pay more attention to where they are going. At least that was the take of Hannah More, the British evangelist, philanthropist and abolitionist (1745-1833). She wrote: “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal”. The same quote was ascribed to Henry Ford some 100 years later. Too bad his legatees weren’t paying attention.
There will be enough barriers to success without a person becoming his or her own principle impediments. “As long as a man stands in his own way”, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “everything seems to be in his way”.
Talking the Talk
It is ironic that many of the most memorable quotes on action focus on the lack of it.
The most famous of these is “After all is said and done, more is said than done”. It’s cute, yet cutting…a smile filled with razor-sharp teeth. The source is unknown but we can guess that it was first uttered moments after yet another unmomentous and unproductive Monday morning meeting of the Board.
Talk always seems to be taken as the antithesis of action. “Help with deeds, not words”, suggested Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch humanist and theologian who many considered the greatest European scholar of the sixteenth century. He had other things to say on the subject, including this warning: “If you keep thinking about what you want to do… you won’t do it”.
200 years later, Benjamin Franklin waded in with: “Well done is better than well said”. Ever the industrious one, Franklin’s ‘early to bed and early to rise’ aphorism has beleaguered and beset youngsters the world over for generations. The inspiration for it may have come from this merry Olde England proverb: There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
Think About It
Thinking before talking and, moreso, thinking without talking are virtues not to be dismissed. The logical extension is that thought without action is preferable to talk without action. At least, you are spared the wasted chatter. This does not necessarily get thinkers off the hook. From the British Isle to the Emerald Isle for this shot at couch potatoes: “You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind”.
And, once again to that paragon of progress, Henry Ford: “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do”.
Linking action and thought is a philosophical constant. Not surprisingly, the conflicting nature of thought and action – as if one cannot think and act at once – has inspired numerous quotes – too numerous to bring to this little overview. I will finish with one, however – from Thom Gunn’s perfectly-named poem, Incident on a Journey: “I acted and my action made me wise”.
Would that it were always so.
