The Latin poet, Horace must have known since he was the one who created this aphorism ‘Carpe Diem’, which in English is translated as ‘Seize the day’. I was 16 when I studied Latin and read for the first time about it. “I wanna do that too!” I thought.  The idea became a part of me: life is short, enjoy this minute without worry about the future. Still, years passed and to my disappointment, I realised how hard it’s been for me to ‘Carpe Diem’.

Before getting pregnant, I was meditating daily. Each meditation was a struggle to keep thoughts out of my mind! I used to sit there in my meditation position for half an hour in order to reach that state of ‘no thought, but peacefulness’ for few minutes only. Once in a while when my mind was too restless to meditate, I comforted myself with the thought that Elisabeth Gilbert had similar struggles, as she confesses in her novel, “Eat, Pray, Love“.

Now when I am a mother, I want to Carpe Diem with my baby. He is a very energetic and curious baby who sleeps for 2 hours maximum per day. Out of these 2 hours, he sleeps about 1,5 hours when I walk him around in his pram. One hour and half of walking provides the opportunity to have some time on my own. One day, I paid attention to my thoughts during this one hour and half. I passed by a playground where a mother was playing basketball with her kid. It was a joy to watch them. “I can’t wait for my little one to grow up.”, I thought.

I passed by a restaurant, where some people, smartly dressed were gathered in a circle and drinking wine from trendy design glasses. “Hm, the times when I used to be a social butterfly!” I was sinking into memories when I remembered how I used to think back then. When I used to see a mother and her baby, I used to think, “Lucky her! She must have the time of her life!”.

You must understand now the disappointment with myself. The life is here and now but my mind is all over, in the past and the future. The baby woke up at the sound of a machine drilling on the side walk. He started crying. “Huh! If he only slept ten more minutes to arrive home.” Faced with his louder and louder crying, all I could think was, “OK, what do I do now? Do I let him cry till we get home?”

His crying was breaking my heart. I took him in the arms. He calmed down and started pointing in the direction of the small park that we were just passing by. My mind started protesting, “You have to get home. Housekeeping tasks are waiting for you!” I was restless. In front of my eyes, the little one was shining with the joy of stepping on the green grass. He stopped at a tree trunk on which some mushrooms had grown (quite ugly, in my opinion). He looked at it carefully. I yielded to his desire. I followed him in his discovery of the vegetation in the park.

After this walk, I happened to find an article in Psychology Today, which talks about “Hiking with a Child“. The author of the article is Deborah L. Davis, a developmental psychologist who advises to consider two aspects when hiking with your child: 1. the temperament, interests and developmental stage of the child. 2. your goals as a parent. As a mother of a baby who is soon one year old, I found the article useful to put our short-term life into perspective.

What I found even more useful about the article was related to the goals of the parent, what is most important for the parent. My goal is to ‘Carpe Diem’ with my baby. The question is how to achieve that when having loads of practical issues that need to be done?