I recently became aware of the importance of the mindset encapsulated in the phrase "carpe diem" - seize the day. It occurred during a long, drawn-out thinking session in which I realized I was comfortable with my typical routine of doing pretty much nothing worth speaking about (which is all right in its way) and I was too comfortable with the prospect of this never changing (which really isn't that all right at all). I kept saying I'd do things, on the condition of "sometime later". In other words, I kept putting off the mere idea of doing things that I hadn't done a thousand times before.
Carpe diem is slowly becoming my motto, and while I'm not an incredibly active follower of its advice ("baby steps" - doing things slowly but surely - is one of my other mottoes), it fortunately leads me to get out and do things (or even stay in and do things) that I didn't previously think I would do and that lead to enjoyable situations or at least good stories.
Today, I tried steak sauce for the first time in an attempt to carpe the diem. I was out to lunch with my grandpa (a semi-regular event which I have probably mentioned in previous posts), and I decided to get adventurous and try the steak sandwich that I'd never tried before. (This is covered in my definition of "adventure".) My grandpa was sort of surprised with this choice, but I explained that I was trying to "do new things, expand my horizons, carpe diem and all that stuff", and he understood.
When my steak sandwich came, so did a bottle of A1 steak sauce, and I decided to be really adventurous and try it, too.
Let it be understood that, while I get into risky situations sometimes, I am at least fully aware of the risks and I do what I can to lessen or at least control them. I did not smother my sandwich and/or chips with the steak sauce. I am trying to live adventurously but not recklessly. Rather, I was prudent enough to put a fair-sized pool of the substance on one side of my plate (far away from the chips, because frankly, I like chips too much to lose them to a substance that I might hate). When I was mentally prepared enough, I dipped some of my sandwich into the sauce and bravely ate it.
I don't understand why anyone would want to put steak sauce in their mouth. It tastes like sour vinegar trying to masquerade as something nastily sweet but totally failing to fool anybody. To each their own, I suppose, but it's very difficult to understand why steak sauce would constitute someone's "own".
As I related this story to my grandma after it actually happened, she asked where I had put the steak sauce (i.e. whether or not I had made the mistake of drowning my food with what was at the time a "mystery sauce"). I had informed her that I was cautious enough to not do that. And in that moment, I realized that there was a very good lesson to be learned in this situation, other than "do things that you normally don't do". Do things that you normally don't do, but do them responsibly. If you know full well that you might not like steak sauce, don't ruin your perfectly good sandwich and/or chips (spare the chips!) with it. If you throw yourself into a new activity that could prove harmful, learn how to do it in such a way so that you probably won't be harmed that much. If you enter into what could be a brilliant relationship (of any kind) with a brilliant person, make sure you can walk away with most of your soul in tact if it turns out to be significantly worse than you'd expected. And it's not always possible to not lose something in the process of carpe'ing the diem. Sometimes you get hurt. Sometimes you lose time you can't get back. Sometimes you waste part of a perfectly good steak sandwich. But you can still have a rather unexpected and adventurous time while taking precautions of some kind.
And that is what steak sauce taught me about following the maxim of carpe diem.
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