Memento Mori Not Working for You? Try Contemplating Your Immortality
Back in the early days of Art of Manliness — probably 2010 or 2011 — I got really into memento mori. Stoicism was coming back into fashion, and memento mori was one of the centerpieces of that neo-Stoic revival. “Remember you will die.” Marcus Aurelius wrote about it in his journal. Supposedly, Roman generals riding in a triumphal parade would have a slave stand beside them, murmuring in their ear: respice post te, hominem te memento, memento mori — look behind you, remember you are but a man, remember you will die.
The idea is that thinking about your mortality — the fact that you’ll die one day — is supposed to change how you approach the world. Instead of wasting your time on the internet, go out and play basketball with your kids, because you could be hit by a bus tomorrow. It’s supposed to check your hubris because whether you’re an Amazon warehouse worker or Jeff Bezos, death comes for us all.
I bought into the whole memento mori thing hard. We wrote articles about memento mori art over on AoM. We sold a cardboard skull in the AoM store that you could assemble and set on your desk as a memento mori reminder. I carried a bronze memento mori coin in my pocket for a stretch. For a while, part of my daily routine consisted of staring at memento mori art and meditating on my death like a good Stoic or monk.
Remember, you will die! Vanities of vanities!
Skulls are cool, but I gotta be honest, as a tool for actually changing my behavior, memento mori never cashed out the way I hoped it would. I’d look at the cardboard skull on my desk, go to a funeral, or walk through a cemetery and just think, “Yep, that’ll be me someday. A noseless skull. Yup, I’m gonna die.” Then I’d go and waste an hour dicking around on the internet or still be grumpy with my family as we’re about to leave on vacation.
What gives?
