Mayflies and the Toxic Side of "Carpe Diem" | decodingvibes.com

Due to their short and highly visible lives, mayflies (also known as shadflies or fishflies in some parts of the world) have captured the imagination of artists and writers repeatedly over human history. There are over 3,000 species of mayflies on the planet today and based on fossil evidence, they have been around over 300 million years. Mayflies have existed long before humans did and are likely to do so after the last human is gone as well. But our fascination with them is not rooted in the fact that the species has been around for eons. Instead, we focus on their temporary nature the most.

If one akchutally considers the mayfly’s full life cycle, it lives far longer than one day. Most of their lives are spent in the immature stage where they live in the water, often up to several years. They hatch in the spring and emerge as winged subadults, take flight and undergo a rapid transformation into mature adults. The life of an adult mature mayfly is very brief, lasting often just a day.

The adult stage exists almost entirely for reproduction, an activity often done in flight for several species. Once the process completes, the female mayfly will find a suitable place to lay eggs and die soon afterward while the male mayfly will continue flying and seek suitable other opportunities until it also dies due to aging or exhaustion.

It is hard to miss the poetic nature of this process if you notice the mayflies arise out of water, do a “dance of courtship”, and then soon succumb to the reality of its mortality. Artists and writers have often compared our own human lives to this, which are just as short as the mayfly’s if you consider time at a cosmic scale.

Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their whole lives in the course of a single day.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

However, if we look closely, the metaphor of the mayfly (used in the sense as the quote above) contrasts with human life in two distinct ways:

While the mayfly is likely unaware of its short existence, humans are constantly reminded of their mortality and are acutely aware of it.

While the mayfly’s behavior is governed purely by biological imperatives, we pursue more complex and abstract needs.

If our lives were as brief and as simple as just flying, fucking, and dying, maybe the human condition wouldn’t be such a big deal to wrestle with. In reality, we are condemned to decide what our lives mean as we are living them.

Dead Poets Society and the Toxic Side of Carpe Diem

In “Dead Poets Society” (1989), Robin Williams plays the role of John Keating, an English teacher with unorthodox methods who teaches a class of students what it means to truly live a full life. Instead of focusing on dry academics, Williams’ character focuses on the real meaning of poetry, urging the kids to “suck out all the marrow of life”, constantly reminding them of their own mortality.

The movie had a massive impact on me when I watched it as a teenager interested in arts and literature. I was enamoured with the idea that words can change the world, that if I lived bravely enough and truly enough, it wouldn’t matter if I tore off pages from my textbooks, and so on. Yet now, being a much older person, I have a very different interpretation of the movie, one that is not very charitable to Mr. Keating’s character.

Yes, it is true that critical thinking and taking action are both good things, and it is true that time has a habit of passing us by, but the way Keating teaches poetry is absolutely atrocious. He elevates poetry to its most idealized form and he elevates the concept of coming-of-age to its most idealistic form where it has to be a fully transformative experience.

In this situation, the students could end up feeling like they need to do something epic in their lives every day lest the day be wasted forever. This might not be his intention but in those developing minds, the philosophy of carpe diem can become twisted and misunderstood (something that he should consider as an educator).

By the end of the movie, one of the kids tragically ends his own life after his father refuses to let him pursue acting and instead plans to send him to military school. While the kid’s parents bear enormous responsibility for creating a situation in which he feels trapped and powerless, these days I wonder if Mr. Keating could have approached things a bit differently and provided a more realistic balance between carpe diem and homework.

The dark side of being truly and one-dimensionally committed to the idea of “carpe diem” is mistaking one’s life for that of a mayfly, an insect that doesn’t have to deal with any consequences or worry about finding its true purpose, unlike us who have to do it every freaking day.

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