Remember, you must die.
For about a year, I practiced reminding myself that I would die, that I would have no control over it, and I forced myself to think about the impact my death would have on me and my family and my friends.
This was not exactly a morbid obsession, but a practical one. I was (and occasionally still am) intensely afraid of dying, but I needed something to cling to, something to punch me in the gut and tell me “it’s time - get moving”.
“Memento Mori” is the Latin phrase this reminder comes from. It literally translates to “remember you must die”, and it was heavily utilized by the Stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome as a guiding principle for prioritizing work and life and deriving meaning from it.
Ryan Holiday, author of several books about the practice of Stoicism and how many of its concepts can be applied to your life (if you haven’t read any of his work, start with The Obstacle is the Way, but Stillness is the Key is my favorite), wrote a great history of “Memento Mori” here.
Many cultures have similar concepts to “Memento Mori”, all of which have the same goal: to induce the experience of death mentally and emotionally before it’s time to experience it physically, so that you’re prepared to handle the inevitable transition with grace and humility.
If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t care too much about how graceful I am in death, but I do care that I curb the fear, and emphasize its unpredictability in helping me to self-motivate.
I’m terrified of having a family, because my dad died at 48, leaving behind 4 kids and a spouse, and what if I do the same?
I’m working on someone else’s passion, but I can’t seem to find my own, much less push myself to work on it. What if I never do?
What if I die and it comes before I expected it? What if it’s painful and slow and I have a lot of time to play the regret reel on repeat, making even death simpler to deal with than the anxiety that surrounds it?
These are the thoughts that so frequently plunge into my consciousness. They enable reflection at best, and completely debilitate at worst.
I decided then that I would lean into the fear, that I would have to work to understand it more deeply in order to make sense of these distressing thoughts.
That’s when I came across the WeCroak app, which 5 times daily would not so subtly notify me of my potentially imminent fate:
Cool.
As you might expect, this wasn’t easy. The quotes truly are a trove, but most weren’t powerful enough to invoke a meditation of any length on my impermanence.
And in any case, five distinct notifications randomly delivered throughout a given day meant that poor timing was inevitable. Having already been very afraid of death, this occasionally became a catalyst for a spiraling of dark rumination.
In a sense, that was precisely the point, but months after I installed the app, I realized that I might somehow be more nervous about dying, that all benefits had been lost and I was now stuck, hyperaware of my fear. That was, until it became clear that it wasn’t death itself I was afraid of.
If you re-read my fears above, you’ll find that there are clues hidden in plain sight, outlining what I’m really afraid of.
I’m afraid that if I choose to start a family, I might not know how to prepare them for the inevitable.
I’m afraid that if I strike out on my own, I might fail, or somehow worse, I might actually succeed and become who I really am.
I’m afraid that if I don’t strike out on my own, I’ll live a life full of regret, all while knowing I could be happy but feeling too afraid take the leap.
There isn’t a perfect way, nor is there only one way, to deal with these anxieties. I’ve come to learn over time that the “head on” approach has generally yielded the best results for me, but each step forward should only involve the slightest discomfort. With each new day, I make certain that what I push myself to do feels narrowly beyond what I think I’m capable of handling. The usual 10-minute meditation becomes 15 today. A simple 7-minute workout beats doing nothing at all. To finish editing this post when I’m tired and put in a full day’s work might drain me now, but fuel me the next time.
Little by little, the slab of marble is being chipped away at. The answers to my fears could be never starting a family, choosing to never give myself the opportunity to fail and ignoring my personal desires and expectations.
To know for certain, though, I must remember that one day, I will die. All I really know I have is today, so it’s important that I make the slightest progress, that I know I’ve stretched myself just a bit. It’s in the process of stretching myself that clarity emerges. My fears spawn new branches yielding greater detail, or else they wither before me as I persistently hack away at them.
Tonight, I’ll rest easier with the knowledge that I’ve taken small but necessary steps to challenge my internal worry mechanisms, and most importantly, that I’ve done so today.
As Dale Carnegie teaches in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, we should practice living in “day-tight compartments”.
I first read about this concept many years ago, but I only really understood how to apply it to my life recently. Wipe the slate clean from the day before. When you wake in the morning, a new life has begun, and you get to choose its direction. Any themes in your life that scare you or intimidate you, they’re gone. If a story you’ve been telling yourself has been running free and coercing poor decision-making, remind yourself that was yesterday’s story: there’s no evidence today that I can’t handle what’s in front of me. At some point, these pesky thought critters could show up again, but today you get to choose how you want to handle them - today is a new life, after all.
. . .
It’s not that the idea of dying is any more comfortable than it was before. I’m still afraid, and I don’t expect that to go away anytime soon. But because of the practice of forcing myself to think about my own death, I’ve been able to clarify which aspects of my life cause me the most anxiety, and one by one, I’m tackling them with grace and humility.
So contemplate your own death, then let it go. Do this every once in a while, until it feels uncomfortable. Press lightly on the discomfort, but in any case use what you learn from the experiences to prompt the further study of your own fears about life, and less about death. Death often just teaches us what we miss out on in life. Right now, I’m holding my fears close, as motivation, so I won’t miss out on much. You have all the capability and will to do the same.
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already, share it with others, or just leave a comment. I would really love to hear from you!
Great article it’s a tough pill to swallow but always a great motivator and why it’s SO important to really experience life to it’s fullest and enjoy every second on this ball of dirt