The intellectual heart of Collins's speech was his meditation on carpe diem — the ancient Roman poet Horace's command to 'seize the day.' Collins noted that carpe diem poetry has been urging us to seize our days for over two thousand years, and we still haven't gotten the message. We take life for granted, putting things off until an indefinite 'mañana' — which, Collins pointed out, 'does not mean tomorrow; it means not today.' But then he went deeper. The real lesson of carpe diem isn't just urgency — it's gratitude. Before you can seize the day, you have to appreciate that you have a day to seize at all. He illustrated this with a beautiful detail from Barcelona, where an annual poetry competition awards three prizes: third place gets a silver rose, second gets a golden rose, and first prize is a real rose — the flower itself. 'Think of that the next time the term priorities comes up.'