Carpe diem

"A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. “Never leave that till tomorrow", he said, “which you can do today.” This is the man who discovered electricity. You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say. I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision. Because, what if you’re wrong? What if you make a mistake you can’t undo? Whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true. That, by the time the pain of not doing a thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we're carrying around a giant tumour.

The early bird catches the worm; a stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we haven't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to 'seize the day'. Still, sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying."

– Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy

Imprisoned

I plucked an aching memory

And concealed it in a box

Covered it with brown paper

And secured it with locks.

Then I hid the box in darkness

In a secret part of my mind

With dust and yesterday’s yearnings

That I didn’t want anyone to find.

But sometimes, remembering is easy

And forgetting takes so long,

That what I’d dismissed to darkness

Came back when I heard our song.

Now you’re not here while this memory is

But I can’t let that be,

So I’ll lock it and hide the box again,

Till the day I can set it free.