Memento Mori
A Year in the Death 1/2/21
Memento Mori: “Remember you will die.”
A blinding flash of the obvious, right? Or is it?
Let’s run an experiment.
Find a mirror. Go ahead. I’ll wait…
Look closely at yourself in that mirror, stare deeply into your own eyes, and say out loud: “Remember you will die.”
Now do it again…but this time mean it.
Look into the mirror. Take a deep breath. Stare into your eyes. And say out loud with as much conviction as possible: “Remember you will die.”
Uncomfortable, isn’t it?
And yet it’s true for every human being — every living creature — on earth.
So why is it so damn hard for us to accept that truth? And how would our daily lives be different if we not only accepted it— but actually embraced it?
To help me accept the universal truth of my own mortality, I purchased a Memento Mori coin from Ryan Holiday’s Dailystoic.com back in 2019. I’ve since had to purchase a second one, after accidentally leaving the first one in the grass at Century West Park in Rock Springs, Wyoming last July…the only bad part of an otherwise lovely summer picnic with my wife on our way to Jackson, WY.
