Memento Mori

Perhaps the greatest motivation in life can come from the seemingly bleak,

Memento Mori translated from Latin is to “Remember that you must die”.

SENECA ONCE SAID:

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply”

Society has been good to us, gone are the days of the black death, gone are the days of the pillaging of villages, the chaos of barbaric violence.

There are no lions in the bushes, no worry of contaminated water.
There is only you and your Starbucks coffee. You go through the motions of a safe life, you indulge in petty complaints about those who wronged you, your Boss, your co-worker, your sister, maybe even your own government.

Listen closely
You might be far removed from the chaos of prior generations, but you are still a mortal.

Death is a foreign concept to you, and yet it is the only thing certain in your life.

To think about your death is branded as dark, a truly morbid act.
Society does not encourage it for it is an illusion a thing of movies and plays.

And still the clock tiks on,
Still the day draws closer for you to leave this life.

This causes cognitive dissonance, a battle in the mind.
On one hand we can ignore this simple yet all encompassing fact or transience, we can go on waiting in line for two days for the latest Iphone. We can keep watching hours of Seinfeld re-runs, and continue arguing with our spouse, numbing ourselves drugs and alcohol on the weekends.

Or

We can accept the reality of impermanence and allow it to scorch the fire in our belly. Allow it to provide context on what is insignificant and what is truly important. Provide clarity on what to focus on and what to omit and allow us to fully grasp the profundity of the humane experience. To chase every dream, we have without a strand of doubt.


It was Earnest Becker who said:

“Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.”

What troubles man deep into the bones is the fear of the unknown
Even Hamlet in his ‘To be or not to be’ Silique declared

“ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil?”

Death is nothing to be feared, for it provides context to life when truly examined.

You payed no heed to where you were before you were born, so do not let the destination paralyse you into missing out on the journey. Life is happening now, every breath that travels through your lungs, the beating of your heart.

While you are living, live good, but always remember Memento Mori, that one day you must die.





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