Memento Mori
Epictetus says that the first task in life, the first job of the philosopher is to separate matters into two buckets: what's in our control and what's not in our control. This exercise — what we call the dichotomy of control — is really at the core of Epictetus’ teachings.
Is it up to me? Or is it not up to me?
If it’s up to me it gets my attention, my energy, my focus. If it’s not up to me, I try not to think about it, I try not to put energy or emotion towards it.
The concept of Memento Mori
“Memento Mori,” or translated in English, “Remember you must die.”
The point of this reminder isn’t to be morbid or promote fear, but to inspire, motivate and clarify. The idea has been central to art, philosophy, literature, architecture, and more throughout history. As Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo:
“The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.”
Meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. It is in fact a tool to create priority and meaning. It’s a tool that generations have used to create real perspective and urgency. To treat our time as a gift and not waste it on the trivial and vain.
Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this. A simple reminder can bring us closer to living the life we want. 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. That’s it. It could all be over. Today, tomorrow, someday soon.
Seneca urged in his Moral Letters to Lucilius:
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”
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.”
The truth is: so much of what we spend time on is not in our control. Maybe it’s a job or a commute to that job. Maybe it’s doom scrolling on our phone, answering emails. Maybe it’s arguing with a spouse, maybe it’s arguing with strangers on the internet. You know the kind of stuff that you just kinda get sucked into. You hate it but you let it fill up so much of your life.
Marcus Aurelius, frustrated with some obnoxious thing that was consuming his days, once asked himself.
“You’re afraid of death,” he said, “because you won’t be able to do this anymore?”
That’s the thing about memento mori. It’s so clarifying.
If you had unlimited time, maybe you wouldn’t mind spending two hours a day in traffic. Maybe you wouldn’t need to steer clear of the cesspool of Twitter or the endlessness of your inbox. If suddenly death was real to you - if you were given a few months or years to live - what would you immediately spend less time doing?
What would the “this” that Marcus Aurelius referred to that you would cut out?
Cut that thing out now, not later.
Because you do not have unlimited time. None of us do.