Carpe Diem, Housatonic

By Dan Otzel
News Editor

Don’t let this happen to you.

Image courtesy of emptyeasel.com.

“I will die in my grave dreaming of things I might have been.”

WARNING: Do not let this become you.

“Time is passing me by and I am letting it.”

Or this.

“Sometimes I feel like my college education was a waste.”

These three quotes were taken verbatim from postcards currently residing on the first floor of Lafayette Hall.

After my moving experience viewing the PostSecret exhibit that’s being housed here at Housatonic, I was left with a true feeling of remorse for some of the poor souls who had let their opportunities slip so gently through their fingers.

According to the HCC website, “PostSecret (is) an exhibit of people’s innermost secrets sent to, and organized by Frank Warren. The exhibit, which has traveled the country since opening in Washington, D.C. in 2004, consists of anonymous postcards, many of them handmade, on which people have written their innermost secrets. Warren has culled some 400 postcards from the more than 250,000 he’s received for the exhibit.”

It will run at the Housatonic Museum of Art until September 13, 2009.

Many of the postcards in the exhibit are from individuals who have had a front row seat watching their life float meekly by. They are not happy with the people they have become and, it seems, their life, up to this point, has been shallow and depressing, at least on some level.

At HCC, we are students committed to the proposition of furthering our educations and becoming better people – in all facets of life. We have the golden opportunity to come as close as possible to mapping out the life we want to live. We have the golden opportunity to avoid regretting our life’s path.

“Carpe diem” is a Latin phrase meaning “seize the day.” Originating from a Latin poem by Horace, The Columbia Encyclopedia describes the expression as “a descriptive term for literature that urges readers to live for the moment.”

With the Housatonic Community College student body swelling to over 5400 students, I would like to urge each and every student to “live for the moment” and make the best of the opportunities that present themselves here.

“I always wonder how my life would be different if the littlest things hadn’t happened. And if I had the guts to do half the things I wanted to.”

Do not let this become you.

“I’m trying to figure out exactly what it was that made me lose my voice.”

Or this.

For, as one anonymous postcard advises:

“If you’re waiting for a sign…this is it. Do it. It will be amazing.”

Carpe Diem, Housatonic.