February 06, 2011

Hodie vivendum, omissa praeteritorum cura


Recording also available at iPadio using this link.

Today's saying is Hodie vivendum, omissa praeteritorum cura. In English: "Live for today, setting aside all worry about the past."

This is awfully good advice for life in general: whatever you do, don't let the past drag you down. Or, as the English saying goes, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." In terms of teaching and learning, this saying urges you to start each task fresh, without worrying about any frustrations or failures you might have experienced in the past, as a teacher or as a student. Admittedly, there are all kinds of aspects of school - like the awful GPA - which makes people obsess about the past, but obsessing about the past can sometimes be a real obstacle to forward progress. Of course, like so much good advice, this is easier said than done, but it is still very good advice nevertheless. You need to live right here, right now: hodie vivendum - and let bygones be bygones: omissa praeteritorum cura.

In terms of the Latin grammar, you might notice that the Latin praeterita is very much like the English word "bygones." The praeterita are the things that have literally "gone by," from the verb praeterire, "to go by, to pass away." In Latin grammar terminology, the praeteritum, or tempus praeteritum, refers to the past tense, which is where we get the grammatical term "preterite" in English.

For those of you who are fans of macrons, here is the Latin written with macrons:

Hodiē vīvendum, omissā praeteritōrum cūrā.



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