Memento Mori Day: Remember, You Shall Die
Today is Memento Mori Day, a tradition started in ancient Rome that serves as a reminder that we will all die, one day soon.
I am not a spiritual person, yet thinking about my own mortality is something I try to do everyday. There is nothing more liberating than thinking about death (here’s the perfect explanation as to why from the absolutely-genius blog Khourisms (Arabic)).
From a famous Steve Jobs speech: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
So yeah. Memento Mori.
kamal
January 3, 2013 @ 11:53 am
Thanks, a lot actually. But, it was only yesterday that someone offered a different perspective on this to me, they said: “I can not come to peace with death, no matter how much I try”. So after talking a it, she further explained: “no, not my own death, am in peace with it, its the death of loved ones that I cannot come to peace with”.
And it made me think about it, I rarely see it from this angle, but yeah, there is another hidden side to it, not merely the end of existence, but the absolute and final loss of someone.
Roba
January 3, 2013 @ 11:57 am
Maybe it takes loss to come to terms with death. Here is how I came to terms with the death of my father: http://www.andfaraway.net/blog/2012/01/10/in_memory_of_a_father/