Memento Mori: Why Remembering Death Makes Life Clearer

the average human life is about four thousand weeks long for many that number sounds shockingly small when you hear it for the first time in our last conversation we talked about finding nature and reason on a crowded subway about seeing the universal order in the middle of daily chaos today we turn to the other side of that coin accepting the most fundamental part of that natural order its end the stoics had a practice for this a phrase you may have heard memento mori it translates from latin as remember you will die and on the surface this sounds incredibly morbid depressing even a constant nagging reminder of the abyss but that's a complete misreading of the

philosophy the common understanding isn't wrong it's just incomplete in a way that becomes important when you actually try to live it the point of remembering death is not to wallow in fear or sadness it is a tool for clarification it is a filter to run your life through the stoics understood that the awareness of a deadline is what creates urgency and focus think about any project you've ever had when do you do your best most focused work usually right before the deadline memento mori is simply applying that same principle to your entire existence it is the ultimate deadline so what does this look like in practice for someone with normal constraints it doesn't mean walking

around in a black robe thinking about skulls it means when you are stuck in traffic furious about being late you take a breath and ask is this anger the best use of this unrepeatable moment of my one finite life when you were scrolling endlessly through social media you might ask is this how i want to spend the minutes i will never get back it's not about judging yourself it is about waking yourself up it's a pattern interrupt the practice pulls you out of the trivial anxieties of the moment and anchors you to what is truly at stake your life this is not an abstract exercise the emperor marcus aurelius wrote his meditations largely for himself

and the theme is woven throughout he constantly reminded himself of the people who came before him all now gone he reminded himself that fame is fleeting that anger is pointless that all of this will pass he wasn't doing this to make himself sad he was doing it to give himself perspective as the most powerful man in the world to keep his own ego and his own problems in their proper limited place here's the turn here's what most treatments of this idea miss the phrase remember you will die is not a statement of fact it is a command the real unspoken part of the phrase is what follows remember you will die so remember to live

that's the entire point it's a call to action it's permission to stop postponing joy to stop waiting for the perfect moment to forgive the small slight to make the call you've been putting off the awareness of death isn't meant to paralyze you with fear it's meant to liberate you from the fear of living fear of failure fear of embarrassment fear of looking foolish in the face of your own mortality how much do those things truly weigh they are shadows remembering your death doesn't add a weight to your life it takes weights off so the practice is not one of gloom but of gratitude and presence it makes the ordinary extraordinary this cup of coffee this conversation the feeling of the sun on your skin these are not guaranteed they are gifts and knowing they are

temporary is precisely what makes them precious next time we will take this idea of perspective and apply it to a very modern problem the feeling of being overwhelmed by information and obligation we'll discuss the stoic art of triage of sorting the essential from the nonessential memento mori is not about the end of life it is a tool to ensure you are present for the living of it