Carpe Diem. (:

CARPE DIEM.

Translated into English...

SEIZE THE DAY!

When I was a kid I was so terrified of death and everything that came with it. Now I know, however, that it wasn't really death that scared me - I was scared that, in my short life, I wouldn't have enough time to get everything done that I wanted to do, see everything I wanted to see and be everything I wanted to be.

I was frightened because we all have expiration dates of a sort - or at least, our bodies do. Our minds go on. I was scared because there was no such thing as forever - but now, I've come to a very abrupt, sudden realization.

If everything was forever, it would becoming boring, and we would take it for granted. Would we truly appreciate the feel of the sun on our faces if we knew that it was never going to end? Wouldn't it just become another thing that we came to expect from life? Every morning, I wake up and I'm excited, so terribly excited at what I'm going to be doing that day - whether it be school, homework, seeing friends or shopping, or even going to work in this hot weather.

Carpe diem. Seize the day. Live in the moment.

"I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived." - Neil, Dead Poets Society.

Seize the day. Be who you want to be, anything you want to be. Live life like the next sixty seconds will be your last. Love like you're never going to get hurt. Breathe every breath and savor the taste of life, because every time you open your mouth that's what you're breathing - you're breathing air that has seen the rise and fall of many a great man and woman, breathing air that's circulated the entire globe and united people all over the world.

Life isn't about staggering around blind to the world's beauties. It's about staggering around blinded BECAUSE you saw them, because you looked upon them and realised how lucky you were to be alive. Life is about taking every day as a precious gift. Life, as it is, isn't about mourning what you don't have.

It's about celebrating what you're given.

"Emmett... my sweet, dear Emmett... mourn the losses, because they're many. But celebrate the victories... because they're few." - Debbie Novotny.

Carpe diem. (:

-a solitary blue

Lack of motivation...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yes, I know I'm late... drastically late. Haha. I'm not even fashionably late. But the thing is... everyone is taking a blogger break. I mean EVERYONE I follow has taken a break from blogger! It makes me... so sad. So very sad. I MISS EVERYONE.

I also don't really have anything to post about. Nothing of substance, really. I do have a New Year's Resolution, actually I have a few... one is to blog more. Another is to do my homework... BEFORE the due date, not ON the due date, to the best of my ability. The other is to study for at least an hour each week night... I have five subjects. So one day for each subject maybe?

I have two movies that I've watched recently... and they've changed me. One is an Australian movie, adapted from the book, and the other was made in 1989. I know, I know... but I LOVE old movies. They seem to be more carefully constructed than new ones.

Tomorrow, When The War Began.

Oh my goodness. I saw this a while ago and didn't really think about it, but then I bought the DVD at a boxing day sale. It's set in Australia, like the books (you can download the books online). Seven kids go camping down in what they call Hell, a small valley nestled between two cliffs and a road called Taylor's stitch. While they're there, their town is invaded by foreign militants attempting to take over the country.

This movie is about so much more than defending your country. Ellie, the main character, essentially has to decide between killing the invading soldiers in a showdown involving a ride-on mower, or letting her friends die because she let her morals take over. She chooses her friends but can't forget that the soldiers she killed were barely older than she was.



Instead of a poster I decided to include the trailer :D the poster doesn't really say much about the movie itself. The movie is more about the people and less about the actual war. I had to study the book in year 9. Freaky stuff.

But it made me think - if soldiers invaded my town like they did Ellie's, what would I do? There's nowhere to hide and I would know, I've lived here my entire life. There's no way I would be able to survive.

Plus I never go camping. :P I suppose I'd crawl under my bed until it was all over.

And then I watched Dead Poets Society.

This movie made me cry. Almost every scene made me think about something more. Six students get a new English teacher, Mr. Keating (who reminds me a lot of my Literature teacher, Mr. Dunbar), who teaches them to embrace and enjoy poetry, and enforces on them the lifestyle carpe diem - translated into English, "Seize the day". The boys revive a society called the Dead Poets Society, dedicated to exploring language and "sucking the marrow from life."

Amazing movies :D

I couldn't find a trailer for Dead Poets Society, but the movie really made me think. (SPOILER ALERT) If Mr. Keating hadn't encouraged Neil, the main character, into acting, would he have realised what he was missing regardless and committed suicide, or would he have been content doing what his father wanted him to?

So many questions, so few answers.

By the way - CARPE DIEM is my new motto. :D

-a solitary blue.

Halfway there

[When the chips are down, back against the wall
Got no more to give 'cause we gave it all
Seems like going the distance is unrealistic
But we're too far from the start]

So I'm halfway between being a kid and halfway between being an adult and I don't know what that makes me. This time last year I never thought I would have come this far, that I would have become such a different person, a happier person, someone who can help.

Watched a spectacular movie today, well, two. The first one was "To Save A Life." It really changed my perspective on things. Basically, this guy named Sam and his friend Roger are playing when they're in sixth grade. Sam runs in front of a car, and Roger pushes him out of the way - and has a permanent limp because of it.

Seven years later Roger and Sam have stopped talking because Sam chose popularity over the boy who saved his life. Roger commits suicide in the middle of the school hall, and Sam's left wondering if there's anything he could have done.

It really touched me. Everyone should watch it :)

[So we take what comes and we keep on going
Leaning on each others shoulders
Then we turn around and see we've come so far somehow]

So now it has me thinking - what do I want my life to be about? Not me that's for sure. Living for yourself is as pointless as not living at all really. I would like to help others. Maybe save a life someday. But it doesn't matter if I do or not; whether it's helping someone with their shopping or not, it's still helping.

I don't want my life to be a turned-around mess like some people I know. Jamie, one of my best friends, hooked on marijuana and cigarettes and whoever knows what else because he lost his way. I want to help him but I don't even know where to start.

I see people every day who seem to have the words HELP ME engraved on their foreheads. The pain is right there in their eyes, and it's bull that nobody sees it; people see it, they just don't want to admit they have. They don't want to look into another human's eyes and think oh geez that could happen to me.

[If we never flew we would never fall
If the world was ours we'd have it all
But the life we live isn't so simplistic
You don't just get what you want]

Do I want to look into Riz's eyes and realise she's crying out for help? No, it scares me. But I do it anyway because who else is gonna do it? The point of being a best friend is knowing the good the bad and the ugly, and the ugly truth is that while her dad doesn't hit her he doesn't have to. Shutting her out and then calling her worthless, fat, is taking more of a toll on her than anything is.

And it's taking a toll on me too. I don't like seeing my friends unhappy, people they're not. I don't like them snapping at each other and bickering and saying you don't understand because they haven't even realised they're all in the same boat.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who's NOT unhappy, like I'm on a boat in the middle of the ocean with the storm above me and the sharks below. It makes me feel to be abnormal to be normal and that's sickening, just because my parents are happy together. Because they're happy together I stick out, I don't fit in.

Not that I'm complaining. I don't want to see them fight.

[How are you ever gonna reach the stars
If you never get off the ground
And you'll always be where you are
If you let life knock you down]

How do you stand up to someone who is supposed to look after you and isn't? How do you tell someone you're scared of your own father like Riz is? She says she's not but I've had seventeen years of looking into people's eyes and seeing the exact same thing I see in hers. How do you convince someone to trust you when the two people they're supposed to be able to rely on have let them down?

How do you convince them you're not gonna leave them? That it doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is, you'll catch a bus with all the creepy drunks and walk to their house in the dark if it means making it just a fraction easier, when nobody's ever done that before?

I hate her parents sometimes. I hate them for what they're doing and I hate them for what they're gonna do.

I hate them because they don't know.

Because they don't care.

[You call my name
I know I'm finally yours
I find everything I thought I lost before
You call my name
I come to you in pieces
So you can make me whole]

-a solitary blue

Tomorrow

So I've been watching Skins, a British reality TV show, and I've realised one thing - most humans are more terrified than anything that tomorrow won't come, that for whatever reason, their last breath will occur the moment they slide into sleep.

My grandma once told me that a person who's lived a full life isn't afraid of dying. I disagree. I would still be scared of dying. More than that, I'm afraid someone close to me will die - just like Josh did. I see Libby fighting her way through a myriad of facades every single day just so she doesn't drag the people she loves into her misery as well.

[I miss those days
And I miss those ways
The days I got lost in fantasy
In a cartoon world of mysteries
In a place you don't grow old
In a place you don't grow cold]

When I look ahead in life, I just see this huge, huge slab of concrete bricks, because there are so many paths to take they all overlap so much you can barely see the spaces in between. Maybe I'm in a space between right now. Maybe all school-age kids are, because they haven't realised that the real world is one of pain.

It's also one of beauty and hard work.

If you think about it, humanity is about preserving the past to enrich the present. We work so hard just to find out about things a lot of people find menial - like when did the dinosaurs go extinct, or how were the Egyptian pyramids constructed, or why exactly did Hitler turn out the way he is, and why was JFK assassinated, and where did legends and myths stem from?

Typically, we all spend our lives in much the same pattern - school, home, school, home, uni, home, uni, home, work, home, work, home... but then there's always that one person in a million who dares to step outside the pattern and go against what everyone else thinks.

[You call my name
I come to you in pieces
So you can make me whole]

We owe everything humanity is to those people, people like John Dee and Katherine Mansfield and Mary Shelley for pointing out the ugly truth, and the beautiful truth. Humanity is capable of creating beauty. Beauty is capable of creating pain.

And we owe people like my literature teacher, Dunbar, who aren't afraid to teach us outside the box, to tell us things that nobody else remembers or maybe never even knew, who aren't afraid to break the rules if it means it gives us just that slight advantage.

I wonder a lot about whether anybody thinks the way I do, and most of the time, it makes me feel alienated, like I'm not a part of whatever bigger picture there is, that I'm a puzzle piece that's been packed into the wrong box and I just don't fit anywhere. And then, sometimes, very rarely, it makes me feel like I can take on the world, like I really do have an advantage 'cause I'm lucky enough to have met all these amazing people who have taught me so many amazing and astounding things.

[So much is happening to me
So much that I can't even see
So many words of wisdom that I am trying to be
Catch me if I should fall
And even more so while I'm standing tall]

I'm grateful I watched "Signs" which demonstrated the power of coincidence, and "War of the Worlds" that showed me even the simplest things make a difference. I'm glad I saw the Little Mermaid and witnessed a human's capacity to love, and I'm glad I watched Valkyrie, how Tom Cruise portrayed the human spirit as something utterly unbreakable.

Most of the time, I'm just glad I'm alive.

[You don't understand what I'm going through
Just to find a way to find a way to climb
It'll be in my own time]

I'm incredibly happy every time I go to school, just because I see so many different people, and it doesn't matter if I don't like them or not, it's just observing them and how they act that's totally amazing. I'm grateful I took psychology and know the contributing factors to a human personality, and I find it hard to believe now that a human is just a machine. How could something so complex be a machine?

Machine implies we're all copies of one another.

"When I was a kid, my mother told me that I was a little piece of blue sky, that came into this world because she and my father loved me so much. Most babies are coincidences. I mean, up in space you've got these souls flying around, looking for bodies to live in. Then, down here on earth, two people have sex or whatever, and bam. Coincidence. I on the other hand, am not a coincidence. I was engineered. Born for a particular reason. A doctor hooked up my mother's eggs and my father's sperm to make a specific combination of genes. He did it to save my sister's life. Sometimes, I wonder, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy? I'd probably still be up in heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body down here on earth. But coincidence or not... I'm here." - Anna Fitzgerald, My Sister's Keeper

the sensational crusader. (: