After all, it is Seneca who urged us to tell ourselves “You may not wake up tomorrow,” when going to bed and “You may not sleep again,” when waking up as reminders of our mortality. It is not surprising that one of Seneca’s biographies is titled Dying Every Day. The Stoic finds this thought invigorating and humbling. It doesn’t matter who you are or how many things you have left to be done, a car can hit you in an intersection and drive your teeth back into your skull. A simple reminder can bring us closer to living the life we want. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this. Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. uk / mmen.tm.ri / us / -tomr.i / plural memento mori. To treat our time as a gift and not waste it on the trivial and vain. It’s a tool that generations have used to create real perspective and urgency. It is in fact a tool to create priority and meaning. Meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. The original painting is part of a genre referred to as Vanitas, a form of 17th century artwork featuring symbols of mortality which encourage reflection on the meaning and fleetingness of life. The French painter Philippe de Champaigne expressed a similar sentiment in his painting Still Life with a Skull, which showed the three essentials of existence - the tulip (life), the skull (death), and the hourglass (time). Let that determine what you do and say and think.” That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue NOW, and not wait. In his Meditations-essentially his own private journal- Marcus Aurelius wrote that “You could leave life right now. Memento Mori - (Latin: remember you will die)–is the ancient practice of reflection on our mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is “about nothing else but dying and being dead.”
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