Dead Poets Society. The famous phrase from the movie Dead Poets Society, *carpe diem, is taken from Roman poet Horace's Odes, written over 2,000 years ago. As everyone knows by now, carpe diem means seize the day: Carpe diem. seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary, encourages Robin Williams in the role of textbook-ripping English teacher John Keating. The phrase, and its accompanying philosophy, has gone on to inspire countless people in how they live their lives. Striking while the iron is hot and taking the bull by the horns (as we may say in more well-worn fashion), even the formidable Dame Judi Dench got the motto tattooed on her wrist for her 81st birthday. It's an enduring thought that, perhaps, motivates us to see the world a little differently from the norm.↵
Meanwhile, pedantic Latin teachers have been gritting their teeth trying not to sound their barbaric yawps because carpe diem doesn't really mean seise the day. As Latin scholar Maria S. Marsilio points out, carpe diem is a horticultural metaphor that, particularly seen in the context of the poem, is more accurately translated as plucking the day, evoking the plucking and gathering of ripening fruits or flowers, enjoying a moment that is rooted in the sensory experience of nature. Gather ye rose-buds while ye may is the famed Robert Herrick version. But let's not be fussy; aren't these merely two different metaphors that mean essentially the same thing?↵
Well, yes and no. It's an example of one of the more telling ways that we mistranslate metaphors from one language to another, revealing in the process our hidden assumptions about what we really value. Metaphors may map to similar meanings across languages, but their subtle differences can have a profound effect on our understanding of the world.↵
Gathering flowers as a metaphor for timely enjoyment is a far gentler, more sensual image than the rather forceful and even violent concept of seizing the moment. It is not that as a culture we can't understand what it means to harvest something when it's ready - we do have related metaphors like making hay while the sun shines, after all. But there is something in the more Hollywood phrasing seize the day that has clearly resonated with people in the last thirty years. We understand the phrase to be, rather than encouraging a deep experience of the present moment, compelling us to strike at time and consume it before it's gone, or before we're gone.↵
As John Keating teaches his students to value their own individuality above conforming to rules, he stands on his desk, as he says, not to feel taller, but to remind himself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. By seizing the day rather than plucking it like a flower, however, we're actually conforming to hidden cultural values that we all share, not looking at the world in a different way from the norm, but in the same way as everyone else.