[linnyu]

It's actually pretty good advice, it just isn't that effective because society doesn't believe in this pretty good advice and therefore doesn't follow it. I feel a bit swept along as a member of society.

[PonPeriPon]

Regardless of what people believe they always end up following it if they are sucessful in life. Very few people practice what they preach, and you lose perspective on the visions of your youth when you become old and jaded, which is why good advice is hard to come by. Those who care for you want you to avoid their mistakes, but mistakes are the most useful and important element in becoming happy and sucessful. In my opinion, and having lived it, the biggest mistake you can make is avoiding mistakes.
Live with passion, motivation and fearlessness, that in itself is true success; money and status is only a means to avoid fear and discomfort, a feat it never actually accomplishes, though it is good on the whole if used properly. Happiness is a state of mind, not a place; you can't search for it, it finds you when you're ready.

Anyway, enough of my douchey opinions; I hate giving advice while I'm still on the path. I'll write a book if I ever find what I'm looking for.

[SilverStone]

It is a serendipitous that my lesson in my English class today was Carpe Diem, and here I read this.

Coincidentally, I told my sister when she left for college last year that I hoped she finds what she is looking for. (Hearing of her current lifestyle, I don't believe she has; then again, such independence and freedom to do what she wants may be what she is looking for.)

[PonPeriPon]

Seize the day is basically the idea, but it's harder than it sounds really, because to be living you necessarily keep evolving, but if you keep evolving it's hard to figure out why you're living. Since I first really found myself at about 16(as a seperate individual entity in the world, my own personal monad) I've been through more changes in opinion and philosophy than I could possibly remember, though many of my core traits and ideas still remain. I'm entirely different yet completely the same, so it's a little hard to know exactly where I stand or what I stand for, which is great but it makes living to the fullest difficult.

Also, just thought of this now, 'living to the fullest' is a terrible phrase; it makes personal acheivement be held to a seperate outside impersonal standard. 'Living to my(or your) fullest' is the phrase to aspire to, since our capabilities and expectations are all relative. Little semantics like that are quite important.

[SilverStone]

It appears that few people appreciate semantics, labeling it as "over-complications" or "reading too much into it."

I find English very relative, just as Einstein's relativity of time. There is also the limits of language in general because expressing this intangible thought in declared words is hard when you are trying to be specific and not sound like a moron of limited vocabulary.

(Regarding that issue, I am told that is why Chinese is superior, because they have so many proverbs in four sounds to say so many ideas. I find fault with that, too, and expression through art, because all mediums have limits as functions.)