Carpe diem – seize the day – is one of the oldest philosophical mottos in western history. First uttered by the Roman poet Horace more than 2,000 years ago, it retains an extraordinary resonance in popular culture. The heavy metal band Metallica has rocked audiences around the world with their song Carpe Diem Baby, while the actress Judi Dench had carpe diem tattooed on her wrist for her 81st birthday. 

It’s a message found in Hollywood films such as Dead Poets Society; in one of the most successful brand campaigns of the last century (Just Do It); and in the social media hashtag #yolo (you only live once).

It is remarkable that an expression from a long-dead language generates more than 25m online search results. Yet just as striking is the fact that there is not one carpe diem, but many. While usually translated as “seize” the day, the original Latin is sometimes rendered as “harvest”, “pluck” or “enjoy” the day. These variations tell us that carpe diem means different things to different people. For some it’s about taking a once in a lifetime opportunity, while for others it is about indulging in wild hedonism or living calmly in the present moment. We might casually use the term carpe diem when chatting with a friend, but how aware are we of its many personalities hidden beneath the surface?

In our age of distraction, where we are checking our phones an average of 110 times a day, grasping these different meanings is more important than ever. They are an antidote to the reality that we are, as Dead Poets’ Mr Keating (and also Shakespeare) put it, “food for worms”. Life is short and our time is running out.

But here’s the problem: carpe diem has been hijacked, and the result is that its potential to transform our lives is rapidly slipping away from us. This hijacking is an existential crime of the century – and one we have barely noticed. Who, or what, are the hijackers? First, the spirit of “seize the day” has been surreptitiously hijacked by consumer culture, which has recast it as Black Friday shopping sprees and one-click buying: Just Do It has come to mean Just Buy It.

Alongside this is the growing cult of efficiency and time management that has driven us towards hyper-scheduled living, turning the spontaneity of Just Do It into a culture of Just Plan It.

A third hijacker is 24/7 digital entertainment that is replacing vibrant life experiences with vicarious, screen-based pleasures. Rather than Just Do It, we increasingly Just Watch It instead.

Finally – and though it might seem counter-intuitive – carpe diem has been hijacked by the mindfulness movement. While mindfulness has many proven benefits, from reducing stress to helping with depression, one of its unintended consequences has been to encourage the narrow idea that seizing the day is primarily about living in the here and now. Just Do It has become Just Breathe.

Confronted by these four hijackers, the art of seizing the day is vanishing and we urgently need to do something about it, or else risk losing touch with the carpe diem wisdom of humanity that has accumulated over the past two millennia. 

My hope is to wake us up to the promise of Horace’s maxim so we don’t reach our final days looking back on life with regret. The prize it offers is great: nothing less than the gift of radical aliveness or, to borrow a phrase from Henry David Thoreau, the possibility “to live deep and suck out all the marrow from life”.

The time has come to reclaim carpe diem.

Carpe Diem Regained by Roman Krznaric is published by Unbound at £14.99 (carpediem.click). To order a copy for £12.74, go to bookshop.theguardian.com