Nowadays, the expression memento mori is frequently mentioned on the internet along with a kind of visual, sombre and dramatical quotes.
Sometimes, it is even described as a kind of death obsession. However, at its core, it basically says the contrary: … Live more consciously.
Going Back to Its Conceptual Origins
The term memento mori comes from Latin and can be translated as Remember death.
But the remembering is not an eerie routine.
During the Roman time, the Stoic philosophers particularly Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, employed this expression as a sort of psychological compass.
To them, death was not the source of fear, but the one to be kept in memory.
Marcus Aurelius stated:
“The very thought of death does not make one’s world dark but, on the contrary, it puts one awake.”
The Stoics believed a person becomes aware of their mortality when
then one has to quit the destructive habit of anger, procrastination and also the need for ostentation.
The reason for this is that it is very clear from the point of writing that everything is temporary and this makes the individual focus on what really matters.
Turning It Into Habit
Memento mori, in fact, is the most human of all recognitions.
It is like having your coffee and thinking, “Maybe this moment will never come again.”
Talking with someone you love and realizing that the moment is like a snapshot of time.
Sitting there in silence and wondering, “Am I really here now?”
Philosophy at its simplest. To remember death is by far the most alive experience one can have.
That is the reason an expression like this is not about fright but about being aware.
A person does not start living when he feels that the end is near but rather when he embraces the fact that the end is there.
Why It’s Misunderstood
Modern culture has pretty much put death out of the way.
We don’t meet it face to face anymore we only allow it in films, hospitals, and the quiet pages of the newspaper.
That’s the reason we find the terms like memento mori so gloomy.
However, for the philosophers, death was not life’s enemy, it was its companion.
The people who dared to see their reflection in that mirror
could live more straightforward, more genuine and more liberated.
Since death doesn’t give you an inflated sense of self it actually opens up life itself.
My View as a Philosopher
Memento mori is not think about death, it is “understand the inevitability of life and live accordingly.”
The first thing that realization teaches you is:
1. To live not as if one is running out of time but as if it is the very moment that counts.
2. To stop controlling life and instead, allow yourself to live it.
If you constantly remind yourself of death, you will not forget life.
Maybe memento mori is not a warning at all but a truth softly spoken into our ears every day: It’s possible for everything to end.
And that’s why, precisely, everything is valuable. So don’t be afraid of death just keep it as one of your reminders.