The term “Seize the day” originated in Roman Poet Horace’s Odes—specifically book 1—for more context, Horace said Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow; How about a more positive way— “live today, it is the day you have!” The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus put it in a similar sense; “You cannot put your foot in the same river twice.”
I like how Mirriam Webster defines “seize;” “to vest ownership of a freehold estate in. Last fall my daughters, Jennifer and Melanie, took on a gigantic project of preserving the extraordinarily huge collection of photographs our families accumulated over generations—photographs —-and their containers—- do take up space. Melanie scanned all the photos and slides into digital archives. In a word, she seized days, preserving these memories. In this age of digital preservation, saving the pictures digitally also yielded extra closet space. Otherwise, pictures would molder into a sad destiny. Now, we can quickly click thorugh, ponder, reflect, copy, or whatever, as we reclaim something of a peek into our past.
In a manner of speaking, photos seize a visual instant of the past. Memory does not do that very well. Some of the pictures revealed how my memory either left out something—-or embellished something. For example, I “remember” the first car my dad had. Last week I saw Melanie’s digitized picture of that car. I remembered a larger, blue, car; wrong! The picture revealed a smaller, green, car. I did remember correctly, it was a 1949 Buick. My confirmation that this was the car our family had, was that my little sister and I are sitting on its front bumper; also this car was parked in our front yard.
Seeing a plethora of pictures of my children and Jennifer’s children growing up was yet another wake-up-call for how quickly each moment passes. So far, I have viewed a few pages of those digitized pictures. In some snapshots of my grandchildren, and some of my two daughters, are views where I did seize the moment—-that is, I recall that I did indeed seize the day! I can see how I invested myself in that moment.
I don’t know about you, but I had let some important moments slip—by distraction, losing focus. It is too easy to do that; we look toward the next thing, allowing less important things steal our focus on the moment. We hurry past the present into, well, something else. When you take your dog on a walk, he sniffs here and then over there. We let him do that without rushing him. Do we have that same patience with our little child who wants to turn aside to pick a weed—well, it was a beautiful flower to the child! Do you allow that child to linger, fingering a small stone? Hurry gets in our way—we press on—–Today is the only day you are sure of. Seize it.
©Copyright Willis H. Moore 2025
This article hit home. I have scanned over 1,200 slides. Now I am in the process of having them printed to put in albums. Why — I like hard copies of everything. (Old fashion). Yes I do need the extra space👍. I really don’t trust electronics that much. As my great grandson told me last week, Nana why don’t you walk fast. I said I am old. He said just a little old. Enjoy you writings very much.