Memento Mori. (Remember, you have to Die)
Memento Mori is a Latin phrase that means “remember that you must die”. The Stoics used Memento Mori to invigorate life and to create priority and meaning. When I came about this statement for the first time, it reminded me of the book by Stephen R Covey, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” In this book, he named the second habit of highly effective people as “begin with the end in mind”. He used this exercise that literally changed my way of thinking and seeing things. I had read a lot of books before falling on that, but the lesson I learned from that passage was so big that I felt like entering a new life after that.
In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one.
Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and
getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers and the soft
organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way.
You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates
from the hearts of the people there.
As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you
suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years
from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of
love and appreciation for your life.
As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the
program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your
family, immediate and also extended — children, brothers, sisters, nephews,
nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all
over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends,
someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The thirdspeaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church
or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service.
Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say
about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother
would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or
cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate?
What character would you like them to have seen in you? What
contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look
carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have
made in their lives?Stephen R Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people p104–105
The answers you will give to the question of “what would you like each person present in the ceremony to say about you”, are key and very vital to the understanding of this notion of Memento Mori. None of us would like to be remembered negatively after our death, it’s a vital psychological need in all humans to always leave a good impression of themselves to their surroundings while alive and which shall also remain after death.
Memento Mori, which is a Latin word that means “remember that you have to die” is a philosophical reminder of death’s inevitability. “The Stoics used Memento Mori to invigorate life and to create priority and meaning. They treated each day as a gift and reminded themselves constantly to not waste any time in the day on the trivial and vain.”
You should surely be asking yourself, what does the notion of “beginning with the end in mind” has to do with Memento Mori. Let’s look at that closely. What is the end you begin with in mind? We all agree that it’s the after-dead part, what would be said of you after you are gone, what you leave as a legacy behind, as the above exercise demonstrates.
And what about Memento mori (why should we remember that we have to die?)
The point of this reminder isn’t to promote fear but to inspire, motivate and clarify. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself: “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” The emperor considered it imperative to keep death at the forefront of his thoughts. In doing so, the world’s most powerful man managed the obligations of his position, guided by living virtuously NOW. Epictetus would ask his students, “Do you then ponder how the supreme of human evils, the surest mark of the base and cowardly, is not death, but the fear of death?” And begged them to “discipline yourself against such fear, direct all your thinking, exercises, and reading this way — and you will know the only path to human freedom.”
When entrepreneur, author, and speaker Gary Vaynerchuk was asked to give three words of inspiration to someone, he said, “You’re gonna die.” Gary explains this later by saying:
“The reason I believe in it(death as motivation) is because it’s ultimately practical. It’s the guiding light and the fire and ambition that drives me toward legacy and living my best life.” https://dailystoic.com/history-of-memento-mori
To put this in simple words, Memento Mori is a picture framed on the wall that when we look at, we remember that time is short and that we can die at any moment. Knowing this, we give out the best of ourselves to our partners, kids, colleagues, friends, and all of our neighborhood. Remembering that we have to die is to tell ourselves that we don’t have enough time to leave that positive impact that we so much care for, we don’t have enough time to fight for that legacy we want to leave behind. It is to tell us that what we have to do, we need to do it now and give the best of ourselves because we might not have another opportunity to do it better tomorrow. Begin with the end in mind; which end? Death, of course, and what you leave behind once you are dead.
In one of my essays titled “Death”, I elaborated on how death should not be feared as I tried banalizing it by showing it in very tiny aspects of our lives. While banalizing death, we can appreciate the death of things, and habits that don’t match with our principles and do not serve our life script. Memento Mori here is to teach us how to use death as a reminder that we have to give the best of ourselves in everything we do, and treat people the best we can, for we might not have enough time left. Memento Mori is also a motivator, for it calls us to take the best actions now because we know we have to die and at any moment. So next time before harming, misbehaving, abandoning, or postponing things that can be done now, remember that you have to die at any moment.
