Memento Mori - Why Remembering Death Can Help One Live Better
"You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think"
- Marcus Aurelius
Memento mori - remembering you have to die, is a concept that permeates stoic philosophy and one that I've recently put a bit of thought into recently, having come across it in Mark Manson's book "Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" and "Stillness is the Key" by Ryan Holiday.
Originally, this post was going to be me gathering quotes, insights and examples from books I’ve read to make a coherent case for why in light of the reminder that you are going to die you should be yourself, not waste time, be fearless, empathic and be present. But halfway through this I realised I would have way more fun writing about a night where I had a trippy experience going down a mental rabbit hole and journaled down my own thoughts and imaginations on what it would feel like to not exist (aka being dead). I told a friend about it and they found it entertaining so I think it will be fun to put some of it out there. That night, I was reading a section in ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius where he was trying to make peace with death himself and that was what got me thinking in the first place. Funnily enough, my random thoughts did eventually lead me to the same conclusions to what I was originally planning to write about. So, here it is:
First of all, I personally believe that when you die, that’s it. Lights out. No afterlife, no ghosts, no spawning in another animal or person’s mind. I know, not fun. But coming from a background of no religion and being interested in only science for most of my life I just don’t see it any other way, as much as I would want to believe in a more exciting alternative. Maybe that will change in the future but for now, I wrote down:
“Imagine for a second not existing. What would it feel like? Maybe it feels after death like how it feels before birth?”
Which is nothing. No anxiety, no stress, no feeling hungry, no nights where I struggle to fall asleep, no jealousy, no excitement, no conflict and most comforting of all: no pain and no fear. That got me thinking, eons can go by and to me it still feels like nothing. All the millions of boring years of nothing but stars and galaxies moving around, all the thousands of years of human history and drama go by and not a single blip on my radar. Because I have no radar and there was no me. I thought:
“If I am just a combination of atoms, if given infinite time and those atoms re-assemble in the same way, would I be able to live again? Maybe, but would it be the same me? Probably not.”
These random shower-thoughts eventually led me to ask some
interesting questions. I thought that maybe this truly is the one single
opportunity in all the history of the universe that I, as a consciousness, get
to experience being alive.
But coming to this realisation was also daunting, because this would mean the stakes are infinitely high. I pictured a small dark room with an arcade machine and you have one coin and that’s the only coin in all of existence, once you lose or finish the game, you have to sit in the dark room for all of eternity. And that was life. At this point it was getting very trippy, trying to picture the concept of feeling nothing and the concept of nothingness for an eternity was a weird feeling to say the least. I remember hearing this interesting saying somewhere on the same topic: “close your eyes, count to 1. That’s how long eternity feels [when you don’t exist]”
My next thought progression was: okay, let’s say this is true, I get one chance and that is it. How should I act? I obviously don’t want to curl up in fear and depression, counting my seconds until my time is up. That would just be pathetic. So how should I act? I wrote down:
“I want to live, to experience as much as possible, to try things, to fail, to…”
At that point I realised even failures, fear, losing and all the traditionally ‘negative’ emotions would feel interesting compared to the plain nothingness after death. Those realisations meant that two logical conclusions followed, one of which is:
1. You can't afford to waste time
This one is pretty self-explanatory. At the time, this quote
came to mind and my brain probably just paraphrased off of some source I can’t
remember so I will shamelessly pretend like I came up with these:
“when one is aware of his mortality, he is incapable of wasting time, of wasting his one chance on the mundane, the meaningless and the shallow”
Not gonna lie, the next day at lunch I went back to watching
YouTube videos, I guess we can’t be aware of our mortality all the time then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
But jokes aside, I think the message is a powerful one. We
can at least use the thought as a guide to occasionally reflect on whether what
we are doing with our time is time well spent. It has definitely helped me to
centre myself and re-focus when I know I’ve been wasting time. More importantly
than daily discipline, I believe the concept of memento mori has helped
me to pursue some hobbies and interests that I would have otherwise put off
until I “had more time”. Realising that it is a real possibility that I can
potentially die in a year, a month, a week, or even tomorrow gives me the
courage and motivation to do the things I enjoy doing right now instead of
“later” because there very well may not be a “later”. As much as that sucks to
think about, it is also liberating. So, do the things you enjoy now, don’t
waste time, because you never know how much of it you have.
2. There is no such thing as fear
I realised that if feeling something is a
privilege compared to feeling nothing (outside of constant pain, of course),
then that should reset the baseline with which I measure my feelings with. No
longer is disappointment or embarrassment of failing that terrifying, no longer
is the pain of rejection that scary because when knowing that when I die I will
never get to feel anything again, why not learn to enjoy every flavour of
emotion that life offers in the moment? Why not learn to interpret the worst of
emotions as the exhilaration of feeling alive? After all, most of us are lucky
enough to often experience more positive and enjoyable feelings like triumph
and success in the first place by having risked more negative emotions. If putting
yourself out there, risking embarrassment to potentially earn something you can
be proud of is normally a hard but often worthy trade-off, then wouldn’t having
the perspective of memento mori make every decision a win-win
altogether? Because now the game It is not about avoiding pain, it is about
experiencing. Experiencing as much as you can before you lose the chance to
experience altogether.
Therefore, there is no such thing as fear when you have the
perspective of death. So, go ask out that person you’ve always liked, go learn
a skill that is worthwhile and difficult, go start the hobby or project you’ve
always wanted to start but was afraid of failing, go experience.
3. Learn to appreciate the little things and the present
“Maybe death is the greatest equaliser, every mind gets only one chance in this universe”
This thought weirdly put me in a very empathetic mood, I now
sort of know what Joe Rogan was talking about when he said he really empathetic
when high hahaha, except it’s just me tripping in my own mind.
I remember one sunny afternoon watching my cats goofing around in the backyard and was I was being very present in watching them, just really appreciating their stillness and interesting behaviours because I realised that they have a shorter life span and won’t always be here. The same goes for friends and family. Rather than let death be a depressing thought, I’ve learned to appreciate my friend and family more. Sometimes, I just text a friend with a message of appreciation who has been there for me recently or made me happy whenever I’m reminded of memento mori. and I realised that by doing so, when I do lose contact with them for whatever reason, there is less regret or disappointment because I knew I made the most of whatever time we shared together by doing those little things and taking the moments to appreciate them.
Likewise, I found it much easier to forgive and move on when keeping the end in
mind. I sometimes ask myself these questions when I’m annoyed or angry at
someone close to me: “are you really going to let this small thing keep you
from enjoying your relationship with them? Would you regret wasting your time
being upset over trivial things when you know you don’t have an infinite amount
of time to spend with them?” and it definitely helps me get over my petty
emotions.
Ryan Holiday
The Daily Stoic – Ryan holiday on YouTube
Stillness is the key – book by Ryan Holiday
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
Subtle art of not giving a fuck – Mark Manson
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