5 Ways Memento Mori Can Improve Your Life

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world” – John Steinbeck

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John Steinbeck once wrote that we should live so that our death brings no pleasure to the world. It’s a somber thought. But also, a liberating one. Think about it - If you knew today were your last day on earth, would you act differently?

Nearly two millennia before Steinbeck, the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’ wrote himself a reminder to guide him through life’s tumults: 'You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.'

The concept both Steinbeck and Aurelius highlight is momento mori ­­­– ‘remember that you must die.’ This is not meant to be morbid, but rather a timeless invitation to live with clarity and gratitude, courage and love.

We moderns might call it ‘beginning with the end in mind’ - the end being our end. But it is nothing new. Sages from the classical traditions and Christian spiritual life have proposed this concept as foundational to a good life.  Modern evidence-based psychology has caught up, and research shows that this concept is key to mental well-being.

Today, we’re going to unpack exactly how this concept works and how practicing memento mori can lead to a meaningful and intentional life.

The Stoic Perspective

So often the mind focuses on appearance rather than substance. The Stoics regularly practiced reflecting on mortality as a way to strip the veneer off of life and see what truly mattered in a situation - namely acting virtuously

Our values often take a back seat because we treat the ultimate non-renewable resource – time – as though it were inexhaustible. Accordingly, so much of our time is spent on things that, frankly don’t matter. Or perhaps, matter less than what matters far more. As Seneca reflected in On the Shortness of Life. “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” (ch. 1).

If we really reflect on our day how much of it is spent doomscrolling, checked out, or worried about things that may not come to pass? If we were faced with our last day, would we choose to binge watching another show? Or would we spend those precious moments with those who are dear to us?

And to that end – the Stoics remind us that memento mori is not only a reflection on our passing but that those we care about will also, for various reasons, fade from our life. Just as there is no guarantee we will wake up tomorrow morning, so too with those who are dear to us.

Epictetus captures this so well when he writes, “what you love is not your own, it is given to you for the present time, not inseparably nor forever. Therefore, if you kiss your child, or your wife, say to yourself that you only kiss those who are mortal, and you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.” The last part may shock us. How would we not be disturbed if someone we loved dies? We may even accuse him of a cold detachment, but in fact, it’s the opposite.

Because the loss of loved ones is really two parts – grief over the loss of someone dear to us and regret over what could have been.

All of us grieve. That is normal and natural. But so often because we are complacent with our loved ones, we put off an “I’m sorry” or  “I love you” until tomorrow. Until those tomorrows add up and ultimately stop coming, leaving us left with regrets.

The antidote is that when you embrace your wife or kiss your children do so fully and completely. And never, ever take that gift of relationship for granted.

Because frankly, it does not even have to be death that separates us. If you’re a parent a fact of life is children do not stay young forever. There will come a time when your daughter won’t want to hold your hand anymore and when your son will be too old to wrestle with you. Its easy to get bogged down in the day to day of parenting – the chores, the responsibilities, the whirlwind of daily demands. But at the end of the day, how often do we take a moment to appreciate that stage of life?

What the Stoics remind us is that we cannot control how long we live. Nor how long the people we care about are in our lives. But we can control what we choose to do with the gift of today. Do we approach it with mindlessness and complacency? Or do we courageously choose wonder and gratitude?  Life’s brevity is not a threat – it’s an invitation to live with intention.

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The Christian Perspective

Every year on Ash Wednesday, Catholics around the world mark their foreheads with ashes, to harken back to the book of Genesis (3:19) where we are told 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.' While the Stoics cultivated an acceptance of death as an end, the Christian hope reframes it not as an end but a passage.

Many images of monks and Saints across time often have a skull in a conspicuous place. The Capuchin Brothers even have a chapel constructed of the bones of all the deceased brothers. This again is not meant to be morbid nor some macabre theatre but to shock us out of our complacency.

St. Augustine illustrates this when he reflects: “it is not the death of the body that should trouble us, but the death of the soul which is eternal.” There will come a time when all of us, will be just as they are. Our concern should then be not that we die, but how we live before God. In that way, memento mori for the Christian becomes a reminder that while death is final it is more like finishing a chapter in a book, not the end of the book itself. The end of one chapter leads to the rest.

It also forces us to accept our own smallness before the Eternal. Which can be a terrifying thing. That is why, as Cardinal Sarah notes, our modern society simultaneously fears death and fetishes it. On the one hand, we hide it in hospitals, euphemisms and countless distractions. On the other – we consume it in films and media which are inundated with violence.

But our refusal to contemplate it does not make it go away – it only deepens our existential anxiety. He writes, “Modern man hides death, masks it, denies it, and at the same time trivializes it. We drown it in noise because silence would force us to look at it honestly. And thus at ourselves.” (The Power of Silence, 80).

For Cardinal Sarah, the fear of death is intrinsically linked to our fear of silence. We drown both out with endless noise and distraction. Because, in the silent moments of our daily living we come face to face with ourselves. And in the Great Silence of death, we come face to face with God.

In that way, placing our eternal destiny before us daily, rather than denying it forces us to take a very hard look at ourselves. We may not like what we see. But that is the point. Rather than to avoid our realities, shortcomings and mistakes we are called to take action. Today. Right now. With the people we interact with every day.

Because they too have that same eternal destiny.  As C.S. Lewis reflects in The Weight of Glory, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” Our co-workers that we snub, our family members that we put off, the strangers that we pretend aren’t there, all of us are moving in one of two directions. When we reflect that our interactions with each other influence that outcome, we realize there are no small interactions. Every finite moment, like a brilliant mosaic, becomes a fragment of the infinite. (if you want to read more about this particular concept take a look at my post on the topic here - What if Everything We Do Matters: The Profound Weight of Our Daily Choices)

The Psychological Perspective

Modern psychology affirms what the ancients knew: by being aware of our mortality, we can focus on what matters.

The Holocaust survivor and founder of Logotherapy, Viktor Frankl wrote that “Death is the period at the end of the sentence of life – it gives life meaning.” Because life on earth is finite, it is precious. And because it is precious it is full of meaning. No matter how glorious the sunset, how amazing the meal, how wonderful the occasion it, and how sweet the embrace of a loved one, it will pass. This concept, often called death reflection or mortality salience, is essentially the modern psychological term for memento mori. Frankl highlights that meaningful moments are amplified and heightened because they are finite and fleeting.

But often, as Cardinal Sarah suggested, because contemplating our end makes us take a hard look at ourselves, we avoid it – to our detriment. But what the ancients and spiritual masters grasped intuitively modern science is now rediscovering: when we face our mortality with meaning and gratitude we don’t crumble – we come alive.

The field of psychology calls this Terror Management Theory (TMT), which supports and demonstrates remarkable evidence of this spiritual insight. TMT holds that existential anxiety (also called mortality salience – awareness of one’s death) drives behaviors to avoid the discomfort. Some are helpful, others are less so.

Part of the variance seems to be in whether one actively reflects on their death and the meaning of their life. A 2024 study in Frontiers of Public Health examined death anxiety and prosocial behaviors (helping others, putting themselves at risk) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers identified that being confronted by death generally led to anxiety of death (makes sense) but it was mediated by death reflection. In other words, those who actively reflected on the significance of life and the meaning of it, were not only less anxious but also more engaged with others in a helpful way.

Moreover, we discussed how one of the hallmarks of not only a meaningful life but a resilient one is gratitude. In a 2010 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology the authors found that individuals who actively reflected on death demonstrated higher levels of appreciation and gratitude. The authors noted that “being confronted with the possibility that any benefit ‘might not be’ – including the benefit of life itself – might increase one’s gratitude and appreciation for those benefits.”  

Five Ways to Practice Memento Mori

1. Let Go of What Doesn’t Matter

Have you ever fixated on a critical email, falling behind on a task, or being late to an event? If so your mind is just like mine (welcome to being human). These negative occurrences can take on an existential weight. At times our minds treat every negative event as if it were a cataclysmic setback. The problem-solving and safety-seeking machine between our ears starts to whirl and bring up all the ways we were snubbed in the past or to start thinking how we can get back at the person.

But how often are those five-alarm fires of the past now nothing more than a footnote when we look at them today? Memento mori helps us to look through the sands of time, so we can step back and gain perspective.

Ask: 'Will this matter in a year? Ten years? When I’m gone?'

2. Do the Math

The Psalmist wrote, “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). If you find that you take loved ones for granted, or have difficulty connecting to what is meaningful in the business of life, quantifying how much time is left is a powerful, and somber, meditation.

Say you have a 2 1/2 year old toddler. She regularly wants to be carried at the most inopportune times - like while you’re trying to cook breakfast and running late (not that I am speaking from experience). Now, let’s generously assume that she does this every day and that this behavior will likely stop at around age three. That means there are approximately 180 times left that she will want you to drop everything and be the center of her world. 180 more moments before she no longer says, “Daddy, carry!” in that sweet way, and instead is talking about school, friends and other things in her burgeoning life. 180 more moments that once gone, can never be recreated.

Your eggs can be a little overcooked. You can be a few minutes late to the next event. Your daughter won’t want to be held forever.

Try this with holidays, family gatherings, and reconnecting with old friends or engaging with meaningful hobbies. We are only estimating but even so, it helps to hold our families closer and savor small moments.   

3. Focus on What Matters Most

G.K. Chesterton famously said, “there is nothing so extraordinary as an ordinary man, his ordinary wife and their ordinary children.” It’s easy for us to take the day-to-day aspects of life, “the grind”, for granted. Familiarity breeds complacency. The day-to-day becomes day-to-day simply because it happens every day. Just because a thing happens every day makes it no less special.

In fact, like the sunrise each morning, it is these ordinary occurrences that form the framework of our lives and MAKE life so extraordinary.

Think of your favorite song. Every part fits together perfectly. That song would not be the same if the drums were missing. It would simply be noise. We may not focus on the drums in a song (unless you’re a drummer reading this) but that steady beat is exactly what makes it special. So to with the everyday moments and people in our lives. They are the rhythm and the framework that make life a beautiful adventure.

The question is do we treat those people and moments in our lives as essential features? Or take them for granted? Therein lies a choice.

Like a movie, each scene of our lives, and every character interaction makes up the whole. And when we remember that at some point the film reel of our lives will come to an end, we face another question. Everyday we are acting as the main character of a story – and a supporting character in the story of everyone we interact with. What role are we going to be remembered for playing? And did we play that role well?

We are all going to leave behind a legacy. What will yours be?

Reflect: What kind of person do I want to be remembered as? How do I want my children, spouse, loved ones, colleagues, friends and neighbors to remember me?

4. Cultivate Gratitude

Not every moment is going to be pleasant. Difficulties will arise and our minds are primed to look for the negative and anticipate the worst-case scenario. We can easily drift into bitterness, jealousy, and despair. However, cultivating gratitude, even in the midst of difficulties is not only possible but an essential component to living well.

Gratitude becomes natural when we realize everything we hold is fleeting. We do not know if this will be the last farewell, the last sunset or the last cup of coffee. Savoring the precious gifts we have forces one to not drift into complacency.

Take time today to pause and savor the "firsts" in your day: first moment out of bed, first cup of coffee, first embrace with a loved one, first word from a friend, etc.

5. Reject Vanity and Embrace Love  

So much of our time is spent chasing things that ultimately don’t matter. The next dollar, the new car, the latest trend. For others it may be recognition, fame and approval. But in reality, all of this is just dust.  

Tolkien wrote, 'Ours is not to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set.' Fame, glory, and recognition are vanities.  Pursuit of them alone will not make life more meaningful. Because as human beings we always want more – more recognition, more likes, more fame.

Meaning is found not in what we achieve, but in how we live and love.

Remember You Must Die – So You Can Truly Live

Viktor Frankl once said, “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” One of life’s greatest paradox’s may be the more we remember our death the more deeply we live. Memento mori is not about dwelling on death but focusing on living.

Denial of death does not ease our fears of it, rather, it only makes us squander our time on things that don’t truly matter. Memento mori forces us to consider that time only moves in one direction. That children grow up, friends move away, parents pass on. When we remember that time is finite, we are more able to be fully present.

When we keep the end in mind, each day becomes a new beginning. A chance to love more, work harder and live better than we did the day before. We appreciate the good things in life for the gifts they are, and are less likely to waste opportunities we have before us.

We are even able approach hardships with gratitude. Often those same hardships shock us out of that complacency that leads to regret – and reveal the gift that we so often neglect.  

Memento mori reminds us:

The sands of time will run down for all us.

Let that shake us from the malaise of waiting for a tomorrow that may never come.

And instead live with courage, compassion and intention today.

Because, in the end it is not death we should fear - but never having truly lived.

Disclaimer

This post is for informational and inspirational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. The content provided here is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis or treatment. Reading this blog, subscribing to updates or engaging with its content does not establish a therapist-client relationship. Please consult a licensed healthcare professional for personal support. Portions of this blog may be generated or refined with the assistance of AI tools. All material has been shaped, edited, and finalized by the author to ensure fidelity to Catholic teaching, sound psychological practice, and lived human experience.