Hype and Hope: Celebrate Before The Opportunity is Gone

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its joy.”

– Leo Buscalgia

Seize the moment. Carpe diem is made of carpe momentum, strung together… or maybe it’s just one moment in one day. I may have regretted missed opportunities, but I feel certain I have not ever regretted a celebration… even when the joy turned out to be short-lived.

In addition to the picture and caption above, my Facebook memories showed me a post from earlier that day: “Earle and I were the opening act for Mommy’s Thoracentesis (Live! From the ICU, Vol 2). He played Le Cygne. Then he played cello to accompany me singing, Domine Deus Agnus Dei. Mommy wanted more songs, and she adamantly nodded her head when I asked if she wanted me to sing Caro Mio Ben. I closed the set with Pieta Signore. I am sooooooo out of practice, but Mommy doesn’t care.

I mentioned it in another post – my mom was my biggest critic when it comes to music performance. However, she let go of that when she was in her hospital bed and most likely wondering if she was going to die. Thinking about our own mortality really is a strong catalyst for deciding what matters most.

Mommy didn’t ask for perfection. All she wanted was to enjoy listening to me sing for her.

When my mom was in the hospital, I felt more afraid of missing opportunities to make her smile than fearing she was at the beginning of a “downhill fast” illness. She deserved every bit of hype for coming off the ventilator and every bit of hope for recovery because all we knew was her condition in the present.

I felt grateful for the gift of time.

I felt more afraid of losing hope than losing my mom. Life goes on without my mom, but living without hope, what’s the fucking point? It just sounds like such a dreary life to miss out on anything because of thinking what could go wrong or knowing “it’s all going to end anyway”.

If everything is temporary, then I am making my life a hope-filled, no-missed-opportunities, messy-with-mistakes but magical, miraculous, carpe momentum, all-zen-and-shit life.

Life is too short to wait for perfection. Time is too precious to spend on fear and letting fear rob me of both success and failure. It’s easy to feel like failure sucks and try to avoid failing, but hey, at least failures steered me to the better path towards success. While on the path of learning which one it will be, I also have opportunities to feel happy while making a mistake before I know it’s a mistake or ideally before I know I got it right.

If you’ve been putting off something because you think the time isn’t right or you think what you offer isn’t good enough or you think you’ll fail, then please consider this a nudge to stop thinking – quiet your mind and listen to your heart… and if you hear your heart telling you even one small thing you can do to carpe momentum, just do it.

And if you have the opportunity to love someone, then love them, especially when that someone is yourself.

Love is never wasted.

Love never dies.

Luceat lux vestra.