The Wisdom of Meditating on Mortality | Memento Mori
A consistent theme across philosophical and spiritual traditions is the ancient practice known as memento mori (Latin for remember you will die). The philosopher Montaigne called it a way to practice freedom. “We die every day, for every day some part of life is taken from us,” wrote Seneca in a letter to Lucilius.
Philosophy (and Death)
In a letter known today as An Epicurean on his deathbed, Seneca stressed: “Philosophy enables a person to be cheerful within sight of death, brave and cheerful no matter what condition his body is in, not giving up just because the body is giving out. A great captain sails on, even with his canvas in tatters; even if he has scrapped the ship’s equipment, he keeps the remnants of his vessel on course.”
Similarly, my interview with David Fideler revealed that meditating on our mortality can help us to appreciate life. According to Fideler (author of Breakfast with Seneca),
The practice of remembering your death or memento mori is an aspect of what the Stoics called the premeditation of adversity. You contemplate negative things that could happen to you in advance, just for a moment. Doing so removes the sting of them should they actually happen. And one of the benefits of doing this is realizing how many things in life we actually take for granted.
Time (and Death)
In the letter titled today as Taking charge of your time, Seneca asked, “Can you show me even one person who sets a price on his time, who knows the worth of a day, who realizes that every day is a day when he is dying?
We are wrong to think that death lies ahead: much of it has passed us by already, for all our past life is in the grip of death. — Seneca
According to Seneca,
We die every day, for every day some part of life is taken from us. Even when we are still growing, our life is shrinking. We lost our infancy, then childhood, then youth. All our time was lost in the moment of passage, right up to yesterday, and even today is divided with death as it goes by. As the water clock does not empty out its last drop only but also whatever dripped through it before, our last hour of existence is not the only time we die but just the only time we finish dying. That is when we arrive at death, but we have been a long time coming there.
Change (and Death)
In my interview with Nic Bommarito (author of Seeing Clearly), he suggested there are aspects of reality that we must confront and accept to live in accord with how the world works.
The composite nature of things leads to some harsh truths: things put together eventually come apart. Although some truths are easier to see than others: people die, nations fall, and cookies crumble.
Bommarito explained for Buddhists, impermanence implies that everything comes to an end, and in truth, things are perpetually ending.
“Nothing endures but change.” — Heraclitus
Impermanence can be easy to accept as an intellectual concept, but mortality makes it personal and tangible. The harsh truths help us see how the world works and change our habitual responses to life.
Fear (and Death)
How do we overcome our fear of death? Epictetus advised, “What is death? A Scary mask. Take it off — see it doesn’t bite.” The ancient practice of memento mori is not meant to be morbid —it’s a way to live a life worth living.
According to Montaigne,
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death… We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere.
Fearing death is as foolish as fearing old age; just as age follows youth, death follows age. The person that is unwilling to die never wanted to live, for life is given to us with death as a precondition, wrote Seneca.
Death is where we are headed, and for that reason, one would be mad to fear it. — Seneca
It is uncertainty that frightens us, explained Seneca. Death is a requirement that is imposed equitably and unavoidably. Who can complain about being under the same restrictions as everyone else?
Life (and Death)
Learning how to live and learning how to die are closely related. At least, according to Leonardo da Vinci, “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.” Another important lesson comes from da Vinci by way of this quote,
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Author William B. Irvine (previous podcast guest) proposes having a coherent philosophy of life, whether Stoicism or another philosophy, leads us to be more accepting of death. Those who have lived without a coherent philosophy of life will often desperately want to delay death.
The contemplation of death enables us to get the most out of life. It helps us to understand that our days are uncertain. As Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in Meditations, “You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do, say, and think.”
Image: The park and the angel of death by Gustave Moreau (1890)
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