Revere Carpe Diem

Hi readers! What you are about to read a poem and an analysis of it written by me with the theme being the opposite of carpe diem. YOLO! or Seize the day you might have heard of carpe diem going by those names. The meaning of it is to go and live your life, you only live once anyway. So the opposite of that is to not live your life. How do you do that? You might ask, so let's not waste our time! Hope you enjoy the poem!

To the Doers, Stop Doing, Start Sleeping

On a normal peaceful day.

A man contentedly takes out his car.

Checks the engines -

And drive down the road without a destination.

Life cannot be overcome in a brief time period,

there's still a long journey waiting.

Subtly soak up the experience on the way,

then pause the fatigue to rest and play.

At the end, the man stops at a gas station,

And his trip is deeply delayed.

It's fine to stop and take a break sporadically,

The clock can wait for him to rest today.

Walking around the station

Scouring all the convenient stores

Sleeping down on a comfy café chair

Realizing the true pivotal happiness of the trip.

The opposite philosophy of Carpe Diem, “relaxat, vos erant 'bene agis”, can be viewed in “To the doers, stop doing, start sleeping.” The poem signifies the opposite idea of Carpe Diem in the term of encouraging people to relax instead of going out and live your life. An example of that would be in the second and third lines of the 4th stanza, “Scouring all the convenient stores/ Sleeping down on a comfy café chair”. This shows how the poem encourages the doers to stop what they’re doing, search for entertainments, and stop going out and do things. In conclusion, the poem gives the opposite idea of Carpe Diem and encourage people to “Just relax, everything is fine”.