What Is Memento Mori? (Explained In 5 Minutes)

It’s worth asking, as the Stoics did, what were we really rushing through?

On the other side of whatever you’re doing, eventually, inevitably, is one thing. What you’re rushing towards is death. And you’re doing it at the expense of the present moment. You tell yourself that the future—the thing you’re after—will be better. But the truth is, it’s not guaranteed. The only thing for sure is now. In this video Ryan Holiday explains what memento mori is in under 5 minutes.

Seneca reminds us that death is something that’s happening here, even as you read this. The time that passes belongs to death, he says. What is lived we never get back. We are dying every minute, every second. When we hurry we are speeding that along.

That’s the purpose of memento mori—"remember that you will die.” It’s purpose is to make you slow down. To not rush through this moment but to exist in it. To be present for it. Even if it is mundane. Even if there is something else you’d rather be doing, even if what may come next is likely better.

And that’s why we made the Memento Mori Life Calendar.

The average human lifespan nowadays is 80 years. That means, your life is made up of (hopefully) 4,160 weeks. So the Memento Mori Life Calendar has 4,160 dots, each dot representing a week of your life and each row representing 2 years of your life. By filling in the Memento Mori Life Calendar every week, you will not only see how much life you've already lived (or as Seneca says, how much you’ve already died), but also how much life you've (hopefully) got left.

And of course, none of those to-be-filled-in dots are guaranteed. Every day it is true: this could be your last day on this planet. As wonderful as it would be if there was no such thing as death, we have to use death as a tool. We have to use it as a spur to move us forward. We have to let it stop us from looking forward to summer. And we have to be made better for the fact that we don’t know how much time we have. We never do. And we never will.

🗓 Get yours at https://dailystoic.com/mmcalendar

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Видео What Is Memento Mori? (Explained In 5 Minutes) канала Daily Stoic