Tuesday, March 19
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Opinion

14 Dec 2021

Carpe Diem

Muscat – The notion of time varies with age. When you are a child, waiting half an hour before cake is ready seems like ages. When you grow slightly older, waiting for the summer vacation or Christmas seems like an eternal wait. Later in life, you wish you had more time.

With age, the perception of the duration of time changes. Later in life, it seems that hours, days, weeks, months and years pass by at increasing speed. The children you saw born, suddenly are married, have children and you wonder when all this happened. How come you did not realise the passing of time?

We spend our lives not realising that the value and significance of things are at that right moment, not yesterday, nor tomorrow.

In the Middle East, people live either in memory of a glorious and simpler life or in a future unlikely to happen, like in most of the poems of the region’s poets. The Western world lives in today’s time; talking about future, or selecting what to remember from the past. We see, for example, in some countries, statues of celebrities are removed after 50 or 100 years, because some have revealed that these personalities were involved in some negative things, or had some activities which are condemnable in today’s views. Some other countries, like China or India, have a future vision which forces their people to share future views, even if the goals seem very far away, and unfortunately forgetting the present time.

In ancient times, the Romans had an expression – ‘Carpe Diem’. The phrase carpe diem was used by the Roman poet Horace to express the idea that one should enjoy life while one can. What is the meaning of carpe diem? Carpe diem is a Latin phrase that can be translated literally as ‘pluck the day’, though it is more widely translated as ‘seize the day’.

In most GCC countries, the political vision given to the people talk about the bright future of tomorrow. But what about today? When the younger generation understands that the future is today and it depends on what we do today, the real world becomes available to them. Often, at later stages of life, we regret not having spent enough time studying, travelling, taking care of our bodies, etc. But then we realise that it is too late. The opportunities are there today and probably not there tomorrow.

Planning our future starts from today not tomorrow. In Oman, which has a vast majority of youth, preparing for the future must start from today. People have to realise that their future is built by them and not by governments.

Mother Teresa said, ‘Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin!’

Technology is taking over our lives, because we are not there observing its rapid progress while we are dreaming of an imaginary future. When we realise reality, it appears to be too late. Time is an illusion.
Your time is now.

Saleh Miri, Muscat Daily Columnist, IS an architect who came to Oman in the early 1980S

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