Memento mori. “Remember that you will die.” Meditate on this, and write out your thoughts. Does death scare you? Does it motivate you?
Ha!
The phrase I prefer is Learn to die. I saw it inscribed over the mantel in one of Jan Steen’s interiors. It was in Latin, but I’m unsure of the author or the context. My personal interpretation is you must approach death by getting exhausted at living. Squeeze every bit of life from your years before it occurs to you to be fearful. Of course, you never fully forget the truth of your mortality, but you outpace it step by step. There may be fear, there may be anxiety, but you must keep moving. Moving physically, feeling the years in pain and aches and slowness. Moving mentally. Learning. Experiencing. Growing. If you slow down, you have too much time to think. Too much time to fear.
Don’t avoid it. Face it head on. You will die. You will die, and there is nothing to be done. Learn how to dance around that fact until the end. Don’t rush towards it, don’t run from it, just keep moving.
It does not frighten me, but I don’t want to hurry the process along in any way. I want to embrace living, have joy, have serenity, have ease, but not for it to be easy.
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