Hi!
I’m in a good mood, so I thought I’d talk about death — or rather, memento mori —which simply reminds us to remember death and its inevitability.
Why would we want to do that?
So that we can live more fully in the present moment.
I guess thinking about how life is fragile and that (spoiler alert!) you will die can seem alarming, but I personally find it calming. If we all have this one precious thing (life) and all our stories on this earth will end the same way (death) then worry and comparison and shame all just feel like a waste of time.
“Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's account every day... One who daily puts the finishing touches to his life is never in want of time.”
―Seneca
I’m not here to tell you how to live your life, or worse, to tell you to enjoy every single moment. I start getting really anxious when someone tells me not to waste time (easier said than done), but when I remind myself that the time I spend on what I love is never wasted I take back my power by minimizing the time spent on life filler. I don’t have to tell you what that is, you know what it is for you.
No, I can’t stop the clock, but what I can do is that thing I really enjoy doing.
Yes, whatever it is that is me bothering at the moment sucks, but will it really matter in the end? No, not at all.
We all have the same fate, even if the way we get there is different.
“You cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you are losing … For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditation
xo,
We went to a celebration of life yesterday and have another one coming soon. Death's reminder comes often at our age and is somehow freeing because of its inevitability.
Thanks for articulating this. So beautiful, and true.