What does 'Carpe Diem' mean to you?
The Welton Mirror: A realisation of life with Dead Poets Society and the Carpe Diem.
It is a strange, unsettling feeling to have watched Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society so many years after its release. This is just what happens when some old friends get back to you, people you have not spoken to in so long, giving a feel of the ways in which you have, and have not changed. We observe the boys of Welton Academy and see ourselves before the world had started to shape us into something we were not. You want the mirror of cinema to reflect to you – a stranger – but what you see is that the foundation is there.
I am still the same person, however, my perception towards life has completely changed.
I had a different feeling towards the character of Neil Perry and understood that the short-tempered girl is still present, but my temper has not always been the main cause of my anger. Neil was not weak because he was intense; he was just being rational in an environment that was choking him. Similar to him, most of us were branded as the difficult ones just because we were responding to individuals who did not know what to do with us. As one of my friends recently explained to me, ‘The individual I had known was actually calm, but I certainly can tell people were who made her react in such a way.’
The movie is a masterpiece in the overwhelming burden of tradition and the discovery that living the way people expect you to does not necessarily make you live the right way. Todd and Neil are devoting so much energy to fitting into the silhouettes their parents cut out of them, but the lesson that Keating gives is that there is an ultimate expiration date. Always keep in mind; whatever they say, they will be dead tomorrow and will not be there to say the same to you afterwards. Their views are resounding in a room that will ultimately be vacant. Eventually, you die alone, not having done all you desire to do.
No point living a life to the audience who will not be there to watch the credits roll.
It is an issue of internal discourse, a drastic, obstinate hope, to survive in such a place as Welton, or in our own life. Being optimistic about everything is one of the things that I have always done. It is no uninformed, wide-eyed optimism, but the inability to allow circumstances to steal my serenity. It is the ‘so what’ aspect that keeps the boys on. Yes, we separated, but the only things I carry now are pleasant memories. Yes, I did misread a date, but what is lost? You had to have another day, all by yourself. Even when made a bad decision, you have the turnaround: I regret coming here, but what? A different experience I get now. Though the circle is diminishing, I see the silver lining: They do not come out with you, so what? You get to know the better of yourself.
But, growth is also a process of losing old skins, and the movie makes me realise that not all I was once good at was my ability at the moment. Rather, I can no longer do it. I have versions of myself that are fictional. Kabaddi? I cannot imagine that I was a player. The bodily agility of that girl reads like the biography of another person. Even the thoughts I would keep with my heart have changed. Cooking is a profession I would have loved to do for a very long time, but see what I am doing at this moment? A certain type of sorrow in the things we lost the spine to. I cannot even sing confidently in my bathroom, but once I used to enter competitions and win prizes. And there is the silence of pages now. Write? I just can’t. Once the inspiration of the film is over, the truth of this block sets in. I cannot; after two books of pouring out my feelings, after telling myself every day I will write. Do I want to? Yes. Very much, yes. But I just can’t. It is as if the well has run dry. It is a way to remind yourself that life is changing. You believe it does not, but believe me it does – in ways you can never conceive of. My 14 year old self would not be able to believe it, were she seeing me today, watching this film and nodding to its tragedies. She would not identify the trail I take or the strict fences I have forged. But, that is what it is like to live.
Whatever it takes, you have to continue to move, cause if you are not, the world will, but you will not.
One risks being on the spot as the clock passes. When you wake up, many things will have already been changed and you were not even aware of it. But once more, should you know – move. You must be your own initiator. No one will ever tell you what life is like and even those who do that will not be accepted by you. Experience is an individual endeavour. So live your life, for it is to live. Learn to accept that there will be someone who will judge you in all that you do. If you understand it at one point in your life, stop blaming yourself and start to blame others. Because ultimately, somebody is going to blame somebody else. You can be that, at least you'll be able to live without concerns and constraints.
O Captain! My Captain!—oh, maybe it was the captain who had stopped to find out what the school board thought, and to live their own lives.