Ode to Tim McGraw

Carpe Diem: seize the day-we ordinaries take the idea to go with our latte and reduced-fat blueberry muffin.

We save the plane jumping for our bucket list check-off when the good life and love is over and ready for gambling at 15,000 feet. As for now, day-seizing and moment-living is just inconvenient.

Carpe Diem: Latin: An irritating reminder of personal normalcy; a phrase often recommended by one whose life is far more interesting and undemanding than your own.

See: ice cream flavor taster; luxury spa reviewer; Waikiki snorkel tour guide.

Most of us are bred in the save-up-and-look-both-ways style. Quite a few of us snub the excessively happy (what's up with those smiling people?). There's nothing wrong with a by-the-bullet-point living-we crave stability and dust off impulse. But at some point in each of our lives, we are offered the carpe diem route. And in most of these cases, we pass.

We're sensibly and solidly convinced that there is too much to lose. And so we wait. Tomorrow and 50 years later, we reevaluate and regret.

New Zealand was my almost freefall-my no-thinking, now-or-never, step in the wonderful wrong direction.

I've always been something of a geeky bore with measly prospects of rebellion. My adolescent versions of spontaneity consisted of a failed attempt at blue highlights and intermittently offensive credit statements. Still, I know how to score a change of scenery.

(The Kiwis also invented hydro-zorbing, a sport that involves you and a large plastic inflatable ball cruising like an "intoxicated space traveler.")

And if life is tastiest at high velocities, look no further than Queenstown, New Zealand-"Adventure Capital of the World"- where tandem skydiving, hang gliding, sky jumping, paragliding, parapenting, microlight flights are easier booking than a local motel room.

In summary, come to New Zealand and you come to throw yourself off something cool, or else.

After a couple scenic NZ trips culminating in rainy grays, I found myself soaking in rather than seizing the days. I was eating and drinking and feeling moderately merry. Life was good-not electrifying. Carpe Diem: Can't be bothered.

Then I found myself at Taupo, a massive crater lake bordered by leftover sketches of panoramic volcanism. That day the sky seemed friendly and so did my bank account; the hostel front desk was brochure-laden and the Irish clerk welcoming. Here was my offer: take it or leave it, courtesy of New Zealand.

I took it.

That day I saw the lake from above, level, and below. It was life blasted open, elation overload, where exulting in each moment is ludicrously literal during 60 seconds of freefall. It was everything but a bull named Fu Manchu, and I can say in all honesty: I felt every single one of those 60 seconds of life.

I won't recite NSC statistics to you. After all, seizing the day doesn't require a dip into extreme sporting. But it's a whole lot more fun when the deed is done at terminal velocity.

For me, the plunge was naturally followed by a series of aberrant firsts: herding sheep and turkeys on horseback, dining hot-spring-side by night, wading through a pond of creamy duck poop for an up close and personal Jack Johnson serenade.

For at least one day, I wasn't thinking of impending deadlines, or where I'd sleep that night, or the throaty prickle of a future hack (these were reserved for a bleary tomorrow). For at least one day, I was doing the bold man's carpe diem.

Maybe you can't seize every day-but if you snag one, baby, shake it for all its worth.

Janet Wu is a Trinity junior and former film editor of The Chronicle studying abroad in New Zealand. This is her final column of the semester.