Carpe What?

Carpe What?

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

John 10:10

To figure out what people do in a typical day, interviewers talked to four thousand Americans. Study participants were asked to split up the prior day into fifteen-minute periods and relive what they did, with whom, and how they felt. These four thousand people were selected to represent every part of the United States, matching census data on age, gender, ethnicity, and so on.

The findings? In a typical day we spend just over 1.7 percent of our time in activities that we personally find to be enjoyable and meaningful. That’s just twenty-five minutes per day doing whatever we love: playing with children, listening to music, being in nature, and so on. And the vast majority of us spend nearly 20 percent of every day in unsatisfying activities such as commuting to work or fixing a broken appliance. That leaves 63 percent of our day—and that, according to the study, is spent in between the extremes, passively accepting whatever the day holds.^a Clearly, the vast majority of us are not waking up and hollering “carpe diem!” in the morning. We’re not seizing the day; we’re all too often letting it seize us. We’re not living with passion.

Why is this? Some would say it’s that we’re stuck in a rut, just trying to make it. We need whatever jobs we’re in, and they’re consuming our lives. Of course we need to provide for ourselves and our families. But as the years slide by, far too many of us don’t so much live as merely exist. We play it safe, rarely venturing outside our emotional comfort zones. We trade passion for security.

So what about the two of you? As you enter this summer season, is your relationship characterized by passivity or boldness? If you were looking in as an outsider on your relationship, where would you say this couple needs to seize the day, and why? Is there something you’ve been wanting to do together that you could try out this summer?

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

—Albert Schweitzer

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