Stoic practice · 3–4 min

Memento Mori

Face mortality plainly and let finite time clarify attention.

Use when: fear of death, procrastination, perspective, birthday, new year

How the practice works

1. Read the frame Death is nothing terrible… but the opinion about death, that it is terrible — that is the terrible thing.
2. Read the frame Let death and exile, and everything that is terrible, appear before your eyes every day, especially death; and you will never have any abject thought.
3. Run the exercise Say it to yourself, plainly, without drama: "I am a mortal." Notice the mind's instinct to flinch from that, or to dress it up as something huge and terrible. We're going to take the costume off it. Death is a natural process — the same nature that turns spring into summer. Epictetus taught that what frightens us is not death itself but our opinion about it. Look behind the opinion. Consider: for the whole vast age before you were born, you did not exist — and it did not trouble you at all. And you've been changing your whole life. The child you were is already gone. You've let go of a hundred former selves without noticing. The last change is not so different from the others. Seneca wrote that the one who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave — because a person no longer ruled by the fear of death has nothing left to be threatened with. Set the fear down for a moment, and feel how much lighter the day becomes. (Seneca, Letters 26) Now ask, honestly: if this day were the last, what would you stop wasting? What would suddenly not matter at all?
4. Record what you notice If today were the last, what would you stop wasting time on?
5. Choose the next action Name one thing you'll give your attention to today because your time is finite — and one thing you'll stop giving it to.

“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by their opinions about the things.”

— Epictetus, Enchiridion 5