The Daily Stoic - Memento Mori: The Reminder You Desperately Need

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Who wants to think about death?In his Meditations—essentially his own private journal—Marcus Aurelius wrote that “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue NOW, and not wait.Epictetus, urged his students: “Keep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible— by doing so, you’ll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire.” Use those reminders and meditate on them daily—let them be the building blocks of living your life to the fullest and not wasting a second.Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this. A simple reminder can bring us closer to living the life we want. 🪙 Get a Memento Mori Medallion to remember this message: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/memento-mori 🗓 Get a Memento Mori Calendar at https://dailystoic.com/mmcalendar✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. of life. Thank you. For listening. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke podcast. Got a long episode for you today. A meditation, a compilation on what I think is one of the most intimidating, but also one of the most empowering stoke exercises. The idea of memento more. That life is short, that we don't control how long we have, and that we have to concentrate like a Roman, as Mark really says, and do the thing in front of us, as if it is the last thing we are doing in our life. There's nothing quite like a pandemic where death is literally in the air as it was. So intimidatingly early on in the pandemic, watching people get claimed, left and right, watching people get cut down like stocks of grain to use a vivid stoke metaphor. To remind us that we are not in control that life is short. And you think about in the ancient world, when death was so present,

so much more prevalent when things like the Antonine plague and Marx really, this time took millions of lives in, you know, much smaller universe. And they actively practiced this practice of momentum or. And now here, where everything is antiseptic and put into hospitals and hidden from view and, you know, someone might go their whole life without seeing a dead body until they themselves are a dead body. It brings in to focus just how much we need this deeply stoked practice. In this video, I talk to people like Chris Bosch and Robert Green and Kate Fagan and Tom Billio about the critical importance of remembering your mortality every day. And then as always, I have my momentum

more coin here, which you can check out at dailystoke.com slash M M. I have my Momentumori coin here, which you can check out at dailystalk.com slash M-M. Death is the ultimate barrier for all of us. Echery coin that just says Momentumori, which is Latin, it means remember your death. Momentumori, to me, puts everything in perspective. As Marks really says, it shows you what's essential and what's inessential. I want to take a sharp right turn and talk. You're going to die in a mental mori. 100% good.

I think I carry in my pocket every day. I carry a coin that just says, momentum, or which is Latin. It means remember your death, right? And on the back, there's a quote from Mark is really the stoke and he wrote to himself. He said, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think.

So this could be the last show I'm on in my life, this could be the last city I'm on in my life, this could be the last book I ever write, you know, the last time I talked to my wife, the thought of your mortality and death in not in a depressing way, should shadow everything that you do because it's the only way to make sure you do it right.

Boy, do I talk a lot? Not that a lot, right? Right? Yeah, I mean, I talk, I mean, the funeral, like I believe in it the most, as you can probably know a little bit, like I love, I'm glad you brought that up. No, you're three words, you're gonna die.

Yeah. That should let you cut out bullshit, that should let you decide how you're gonna treat other people and let yourself be treated, and it should determine the quality of the work that you're gonna do. This happens to everybody in a micro. It's called when police lights go on behind you,

you're scared, shitless, you change your behavior, then the car drives by you, right? And then for like three minutes, you're like, okay, I'm gonna go 55 now. And then you know, four minutes later, you're going 73 again. Right. And that's how I think people do it now. And then, you know, four minutes later, you're going 73 again. And that's how I think people do it in life. Like something bad happens, they hear something,

they see something, and they're like, oh shit. I'm gonna live under the mindset of you're gonna die. Like yeah, they've seen my thing, it hit them for a day. Well, it's like you hear about a friend who has cancer and you think like, what would I do if I had cancer, right? You do have cancer, you're gonna fucking die. You do have cancer, you just don't,

you just don't, first off, cause lots of people do get cancer, so there's a real chance, the cells are already in your body, right? But like, you do have a fatal diagnosis from a doctor, he just can't tell you if it's six months or 60 years, but you are definitely a hundred percent going to die and it could be tomorrow, so what are you going to do with that information?

My friend emailed me on a Friday, I told myself I was going to respond on Monday and by Sunday he was gone, he'd fallen dead of a heart attack. And this is why the Stokes practice momentum or life is short, you can go at any moment, but also they said, the people who are precious to you, you do not possess them, you can't take them for granted. You can't assume they're going to be here forever. You can't assume you're always going to have them. You don't have them now. They're here on loan. They are here under shaky status at best. So you can't take people for granted. You can't take time for granted. You can't go to bed angry as they say. You can't hold on to grudges. Like, be with them now while you can.

Forgive them now while you can. Appreciate them now while you can. Enjoy them now while you can. That's the only thing we can do. Memento Mori, you could leave life right now as Marcus is. But also, they could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think, particularly with the people who matter most to you.

One of the most withering lines from Senaqa, he says, you're afraid of dying, but how is the way that you're living any different from being dead? And I think his point is that we go around, we have this anxiety about death, we don't wanna die, we wanna stay alive, but if we actually looked at our life, I mean, you're afraid of your afraid of dying because you're going to miss out on all these

Netflix shows. Like you're afraid of dying because you're going to you're not going to get to spend all that time and traffic anymore. Marcus really, he said something really similar. He said, you're afraid of dying because you can't do this anymore. And it's the same idea. Like we waste so much time, so much of life is absurd and lame and ridiculous. And we're really just like burning the days. We're just like, we're almost like prisoners. We're just watching the second hand on the wall just tick away.

And so we are freed by death. And so the idea isn't depressing. It's not saying that life is meaningless and that you should kill yourself. It's saying the opposite. It's saying that life is super meaningful and you're an idiot if you waste a single second of it. I mean, that's sort of the idea of the of the memento morricorn that we've made and that all these people carry with them now. It's like, look,

you will die. It's a fact of existence. And you can leave life at any moment. So let's make sure that you make the most of this moment. It's the idea. The other I think bad ass line from Sena Kasi says, you act like mortals in all that you fear and immortals in all that you desire. So we go around and we're afraid of shit. We're afraid of heights.

We're afraid of getting hit by a bus. We're afraid of being mugged. We're afraid of shit. We're afraid of heights. We're afraid of getting hit by a bus. We're afraid of being mugged. We're afraid of dying in an accident. And yet, when we think about like all the money that we're trying to earn and all the fame that we want and all the pleasures that we want to have, we're acting as if this is going to go on forever and that we need as much of it as humanly possible

and that we need to defer the present moment so we could have more in the future. But the truth is we are mortal and that the future is not a given. And so why don't we just find, you know, the Aristotelian means, a midpoint between the two. Why don't we think about that? Why don't we just think about letting this moment that we're in be enough, not having

fear, not having desire, just having sort of gratitude and appreciation and presence for what we have in front of us. I mean, to me, that's the way to do it. This is actually a really important final stoic concept. I care, I coin in my pocket, this is Memento Mori. On the back has a quote from Marcus Riele.

She says, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. To me, this is the ultimate way to cut obstacles down the size, to put things in perspective, to be grateful instead of resentful, to be excited instead of bitter or resigned. It's like I'm alive. It's pretty good, right? And to waste our time resenting, to waste our time curling ourselves against a wall that's never going to change and always will be thus, is to waste our time to hurling ourselves against a wall that's never gonna change and always will be thus

is to waste this precious gift, our existence, the present moment, and this dose advise us not to do that. Senaqa says, we should prepare each day every minute as if we're coming to the end of life. You said, leave your books in good shape, right? I'm sure there's some accountants in the room. Balance the books of life each day. Put the finishing touches on your life.

Don't leave anything hanging. Don't put anything off. Do it now, because now is now. Senaq says, don't think of death as this thing in the future that may or may not happen, that you're moving slowly towards. Hopefully you've got many years left towards. This is actually death is now. Death is the ticking second hand on your watch.

This is the time that passes belongs to death. You never get it back. So time then is our most precious resource. We have to figure out how to spend it wisely. We have to figure out how not to waste it. We have to figure out how to enjoy it, even amidst the obstacles and difficulties. And any idea that things are going back to normal,

that they'll go back to the old way that they were, just not how things work, or that you're just weighed it out. No, now is now, in the time that you waste the things that you put off, problems you don't tackle that you hope will resolve themselves, what you're wasting is life. It was an ordinary regular season game against the team that he'd played dozens of times over the course of his career. Chris Bosch didn't know in the locker room as he was lacing up his shoes that it would not just be the last time he played the Spurs, but be the last time he played professionally as an athlete.

An imbalism in his leg would end his plan career, suddenly, anticlimactically, tragically. When the Stokes talk about momentum or that life is short, it's not just the idea that we could go any moment, which we can. It's that the things we care about, the things we love, the things we're doing, we are not in control of them, we don't control when they begin or end.

And so the reason the Stoics talk about being present, about not taking things for granted, about not deferring things into the future. It's for that reason, because you don't know when your career is gonna end. You don't know when your knee is gonna blow out. You don't know how long you get to do things. And so to take them for granted,

to assume they'll always be there, to not give your best, is arrogant, it's reckless, it's selfish, it's short-sighted, and you can't do it. You had like a real up close reminder of this idea of momentum, Mori, like life is short. Yeah. You could go at any moment, and now you got to figure out, you know, you still have this gift of time, but you don't know how long here's your four. Me and my wife, she's challenged me, you know, being a basketball player, having schedules, which you have to have a schedule, I believe,

and do all these things. But she's given a challenge to me, which I've accepted months ago, was to be more present, stay in the moment a lot more. Sure. You know, even if I'm at my desk writing or making voice memos,

or, you know, trying to produce some music and get emails out or read these things that I need to read. When it's time to go with the kids, I put it up and it's time to go with the kids. If I'm walking back to the office and I see my wife sitting by the pool and she's answering some emails to,

hey babe, let's come out and have lunch. All right, cool. I used to be in a point where I'm like, no, no, no, I have to go back here and I've got to go back to the thing. You know, I'm working now, I'm working on, you know, just being more in the moment and appreciating those things. And it's crazy.

My work has gotten a lot better. It's been insane. Well, I struggle with that too, right? Because to get good at what you do, you have to be driven. And you have to be self-driven, right? Like, you don't become great because the coach wants it for you. You have to want it more than the coach wants it.

But then it's really hard to turn that off. So yeah, it's like, I like to get up early and I like to get to work. But then it's like, you know, it's 803. And I'm like a jerk because I got to get here. And it's like, who's watching? You know, like, if I got there at 815, just stay 15 minutes later.

You know, get the work done. But like, you're rejecting this present moment, which could be five minutes with your kids, create a nice conversation with a wife, could just be watching the sunset or sunrise. But I think what I realize about the Stokes, the Stokes are saying, where are you rushing towards? You're rushing towards death. Right, for sure.

You're trying to get this over with. You'll be harrying and then hit the bump and then, oh, you don't have him for bit. You know. No, but also it's like, if you, once you get it all done, what happens? Like, you finish this, you finish this, you finish this. What's the last thing that happens? You die. So why rush? Like, you should be present. You should show up. You should experience it because you only get to do it once. And it's and it's almost arrogant to try to get this thing over with so you could do this thing. When I put my kids down, I go, you know,

it's like taking too long, you know, they're saying, you never want to go to bed. I'm like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do when you go to bed? Right? Like answer email, watch TV, smash. Right, just stuff.

You know, like nothing. I'm not going to do anything that's more important than this. Yeah, and I kind of have that same mentality, you know, where we've learned to coexist in the house a lot of the times, but I don't understand. You don't have to travel 42 nights a year. Yeah, you know, so I'm gonna have my child coming in

while I'm trying to do my work and say, Dad, come here, you gotta see this. Dad, let me show you something. Let me show you something. And I'm gonna have to walk across the yard because they want me to show me something. And it used to be like, oh, no, no, dad, let me show you something. Let me show you something. I'm gonna have to walk across the yard because they want me to show me something. And it used to be like, oh, no, no, no, but now I'm like, all right, cool, yeah, come on.

But just having that moment for them to say, wow, they don't care about all that stuff. What is important to them is that, hey, dad came with me to look at my stick. Yeah, look at my pet rod, dad. He's like, oh, it's crazy, bro. You know, it's just, but having those moments and staying present with that,

you know, it's definitely giving me more of an appreciation for things and how they happen. Because this definitely is a great metaphor of that conclusion of saying, okay, man, you know, man, and you know, and I've had my peers few of them going. Yeah. You know, so let me make sure I'm enjoying today. Let me make sure if I'm working on something, I'm working on something I want to work on.

Yeah. You know, and I'm not being a mean person, and even if it's a rough day, man, come on kids, let's go for some ice cream or something, go for a walk or something, but just to do something or be open to the to the flow, taking you somewhere else. That was one of the most beautiful things I read in an article about Kobe a couple days before he died. Some reporter was like, Hey, I want to interview you for this like 20 year anniversary, some

big ESPN piece and the text and I mean, just text it back. Nah, I got my girls. Yeah. You know, like, he didn't know that he only had them for three more days. And how long could that interview have taken 10 minutes, 15 minutes? But that's everything.

That's everything. Because he knows I'm a gettin' momma momma and I'll be over here, no, no, no, no, my girls. And my kids are very much the same as well. They're like, hey, Dad, what are you doing? Oh, another interview, oh, you know. They're like, Hey, Dad, what are you doing? Another interview. Oh, you know, yeah, they want to watch cartoons or, you know, we have gardening bees now and stuff. You're raising bees. Yeah, we got some bees, man. We they want to go see those things. They want

to, you know, get their hands dirty and have experiences and activities and this, you know, through that, I've gotten to live through them and with them and say, wow, man, look at all this stuff, it's so cool just to smell the dirt and the air and stuff, you know, that's a great thing to be present for. There's a haunting story about Montenna, in 1569 he's thrown from a horse and it nearly kills him. And as his friends lift his lifeless body up the ground and carry him home to die, he says he can feel life dancing on the tip of his lips. And he realizes when he does miraculously survive this,

just how tenuous our connection with life is, how we have to embrace it, how we have to seize it, how we can't take anything for granted. And this is the old philosophical idea of Memento Mori. I carry this coin in my pocket. Marcus Aurelius, this is quote on the back, he says, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. You can't take life for granted, you can't assume you have a firm grasp on life because it could slip from your fingers at any moment and that's what momentum is about.

Why did you give the most valuable real estate in your book to death? Well, death is the ultimate barrier for all of us, not just physically but psychologically. I maintain that human beings are messed up, screwed up in so many ways because of their awareness of death and their fear of death. It is through this fear that we created all kinds of superstitions that we created the idea of an afterlife. You're enslaved by this fear. You're not aware of it. It's controlling you. Overcoming is the ultimate freedom. Most people are gonna say, oh, that's not me, as they say, and for all of these chapters. Oh, other people, they're irrational not me. Yeah, oh, I'm not really afraid of death.

I play video games and I'm always killing people in it. I watch movies and people are always dying, because I'm not afraid of it. Our culture was permeated with cartoon versions of death. Your death is something physical. It's going to happen to you. It's a very visceral thing. You are afraid of it. And that fear is creates what I call latent anxiety. It makes you fearful of a lot of things in life and you're not aware of it. It makes you cautious about failure.

It makes you cautious about taking risks. So I'm trying to show you that your fear of death is infected you on many, many levels. And so I compared to this, I use the metaphor in the book. I don't use many metaphors, but this is one I use, is that death is like this vast ocean that we stand on the shore of. Most animals are not aware of their mortality. We are the only species as far as we know that's aware that's mortality. And here you are on the shore of this immense vast ocean. You don't know what death is or what it's going to be. And you're afraid of it and you turn your back to it.

And we humans have the ability to explore things to conquer our fear. And I want you instead of turning your back to actually enter that vast ocean and explore it. And I show you ways of exploring the actual thought of your own mortality and how it can free you and inspire you in many ways. You're afraid of death. Most of us are. But Mark really says, are you afraid of death? Because you won't be able to do this anymore. Watch stupid videos like this on the internet.

Scroll on your phone. Wait in a waiting room. Wait for your flight to board. Wait for your job. We fear death and yet we waste so much time in our lives with things that don't matter. And so much of life is frustrating and annoying and pointless. So one, don't cling to life as if it's this magical thing because for most of us, it isn't a magical thing. But I think what the Stokes are really saying is focus on what does really matter on what you actually control On the life that you have it said because there's don't think of death as something in the future something If you're think of it as something that's happening right now

You're afraid of death because you might die in the future But in reality you're dying right now as your life is happening Wasting it on TikTok or Instagram or email or fighting with someone about some nonsense, right? You're afraid of death because you won't do that anymore. How about you just stop doing that and you magically get more life right now? Going back to Cicero, Cicero says that to philosophize is to learn how to die, that that's what we're all doing.

We're all over the course of a life, learning how to do the one thing that we all have to do, the one thing that all humans have shared for all time. And yeah, it seems like in a sense by allowing you in and the real gift that your father gave you all and then, you know, gives the readers by opening up to a writer is that he allowed you to experience and struggle with the struggle that we all have, which is being afraid. Yes. and I mean, that's the through line of the book, while in part being like a life lessons that were taught through the game, and then life lessons in that last year of his life as he's in the final year with ALS,

I'm trying to show a portrait of an athlete, which is a different mentality than other mentalities. It's very much a portrait of an athlete. Like you said, working through the mindset of who he wants to be and how he's going to one accept death and then approach death. And for much of the book and the story, he is unwilling to do so. Because he just, he sees it one as, I think he sees it as failure to some degree that he's giving up. Yeah. And then, and then of course, it's just, he sees it one as, I think he sees it as failure to some degree that he's giving up. Yeah.

And then, and then of course, it's losing. It's losing. It's definitely in his mind for much of the book losing. And then there's just fear on a very primal base instinct of fear. And it's not until the very, very end that he starts to realize that surrender is what he needs to do. But the complicated thing about, you know, the book is that by the time he realizes this, he has completely lost his voice. So there's this section of time where I'm almost desperate to know what it's like for him, because aren't we all just so curious of when someone is finally looking

at death and has come to philosophize to the point that they are accepting that death is going to happen, I want to know why and how and what that feels like, but he couldn't talk anymore. And so is trying to piece together small things that he was doing and ways in which he was communicating by blinking and trying to, in my own mind, as the writer of this story, piece together what he must be feeling and thinking and what it all means. What do you learn from how he lays there and how he holds his head up and uses his eyes?

What do you feel like he communicated with you about the hardest thing that we all have to do? The very unique way in which he died was that we decided to take him off his ventilator, his tracheostomy, but we had about 48 to 72 hours before the hospital was willing to transfer us and make this happen and have all the paperwork done. So it was almost like, I mean, in a way,

he's almost like a death row, right? He knows when this is going to happen, but we can't do it yet. So he has this chunk of time. And it was really interesting to me the things he was bringing up, because even though he couldn't talk, he could mouth something and we could try to read his lips or we had a system where he could, you know, left I was yes, right I was no. And the night before we transferred him to the ICU to start the morphine drip, which would end his life, he was really forceful about translating this one sentence. And when I finally got it translated,

the sentence was the fight outside CVS. And it was this fight that my dad and I had had. 15 years prior in Rhode Island. And it was the biggest fight we'd ever had outside of a CVS. And it was about a stupid thing. It doesn't matter now, but we'd really gotten into it. And it was really compelling to me to see that the point that he brought this up. The second I said, the fight outside CVS, he blinks his eye, yes, yes, yes.

And then he maled, I'm so sorry. And it just, I was like, we all think that at the end of life, we're gonna be like reminiscing about the weddings and the vacations and depths of other people. But like, that was something that had given our relationship, like, texture. It was this thing. And that's what he was thinking about. In these final hours was like moments in his life that he maybe hadn't communicated properly and he wanted to go back and just make sure I knew as I kept forward in life that I knew that he too wanted more from our relationship and that he too had made mistakes. And so it was very compelling to me,

not that it's not common sense that we want to reconcile all these things but that very specific thing we'd never talked about since the day it had happened until the day before he died. Well, and obviously I didn't know your father so this might not be what he was trying to say, but I think the other part of that is,

you know, we think, and we say this, like, when you were thinking about leaving ESPN, you know, we go like, am I going to regret doing this or not chasing my passion? Am I going to regret not going to this opportunity to do X, Y and Z. We think we're going to regret things that have to do with like pleasures that we didn't take or roads that we didn't take or things that we didn't do. But in reality, I think what we end up regretting is the times we lost our temper about things that didn't matter. That we regret the way we treated people that we cared about and the way we treated them wasn't a reflection of what we actually felt about him.

So I wonder if what your dad didn't want that thing, which is so meaningless in retrospect, to mean anything years later. You know what, like he didn't want that to go unaddressed because it didn't matter, but at the same time it mattered so much. Yeah, well, you're definitely spot on because it was the last thing I remember.

It was the last element of our relationship that had been conflict that we hadn't talked about since he'd gotten sick. Like there had been other mistakes I'd made, decisions I'd made that we hadn't talked about that over the last years of his life, I brought up or he brought up and we talked through and we both got into this place

where we're like, that's done. That no more holds any power in how I think about you or how I think about our relationship. But the fight outside CVS had gone on address. And it was still, I assume, this thorn in his mind about, okay, well, we talked about this thing, we talked about that thing, I regret that, I regret that and we had gotten it all out, except this one thing. And you're completely right,

and that nothing in those, it was such a fascinating case study of like those last 48, 72 hours, like the things we were talking about. It was just, it was just reliving memories, all, you know, reliving memories, reliving stories, and making sure any thorn that it existed got pulled out. And it was all relationship always. Like I think about like with my wife like, let's say I was to list like the 15 biggest fights

that we've ever had. I don't think there's a single one that I'm like, I would still die on that hill, right? You know what I mean? Like none of the are in retrospect, right? And so we get so worked up about things, and then it becomes this sort of feedback loop, and then all of a sudden, yeah, you're having a fight outside CVS and 15 years later,

it remains unaddressed, you know? And I think death puts all those things in perspective. Yeah, and that was what we were watching him do, was putting everything in perspective. Yeah, and that was what we were watching him do, was putting everything in perspective. The greatest honor that a Roman could receive was a triumph through Rome. You would march victorious coming home from the battlefield, you'd be led on a chariot, but yet they also had a servant follow close behind who whispered in your ear, momentum worry. Meaning you are mortal.

They wanted someone at their greatest moment of triumph. They wanted them to be reminded that they were still a human that life was short. I actually carry this coin in my pockets is Memento Mori. I'm on the back, it has a quote from Marcus Realis that you could leave life right now. He says, let that determine what you do, say, think.

In today's video, I wanted to talk about the concept of momentum worry in as short a time as possible, to give you what I think is one of the most life-changing exercises in all of Stuart philosophy. Again, in the ancient world, life was very fragile, and yet even then they had to remind themselves that they could go at any moment. And I think death, as we have become successful as a society, as we become more and more insulated from tragedy, has receded from the forefront of our consciousness. Shakespeare famously said that every third thought after he retired would be of his grave. I don't know if it has to be that often, but at least once a day, just take a minute to

think, I don't know how much time I have left. As Seneca says, we go through life, afraid of some things as if we're mortal, but then we treat time as if we are immortal, as if we have an unlimited amount of it, and we don't. The tragedy is, by the time we realize we've been taking time for granted, it's too late. One of the most life-changing exercises as far as momentum or he goes for me came from Santa Cusinicus. Santa Cusinus says, don't see death as something in the future

that you're moving towards. It's said, see it as something that's happening right now. It's just you're dying every minute. You are dying every day. It's the time that passes belongs to death. So I don't think about the fact that I'm 34 and that means per actuary tables, I've got 45 years left. I think instead that I've died

34 years. I've died. However many minutes I've spent talking to you So why am I doing it because this is important to me. It wasn't important to me. I shouldn't do it right since I am doing it I should do it as if it matters. I should give it my best Momento Mori toi puts everything in perspective. As Mark really says, it shows you what's essential and what's inessential. This is great test. Mark says, ask yourself, am I afraid of death

because I won't be able to do blank anymore? And I think about that, the things that we spend so much time doing, then we wonder where does our time go. Right, we spent it on frivolous stupid things. So for the Stokes, Memento Mori was this humbling bit of perspective. It put everything in sharp focus. And I think even one of the most haunting exercises in Stoicism about memento, Mori, it doesn't just apply to you, but also the people you love. Marcus really says, as you tuck your child into bed at night, save yourself.

They may not make it to the morning. Is that supposed to be detaching you from not feeling what you feel towards them? It's the opposite. It's telling you don't rush through this because what you're rushing towards is death. Slow down, be present, cherish the person while you have them. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all. I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. I'm just the name of singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. I'm just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer.

And trust me, I keep a bag, love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby this is Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind.

What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits.

Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. It's not that life is short, Senaka says. It's that we waste a lot of it. The practice of momentum or the meditation on death is one of the most powerful and eye-opening things that there is.

We built this momentum-mory calendar for Dio Sto to illustrate that executive in your life. In the best case scenario is 4,000 weeks. Are you gonna let those weeks slip by or are you going to seize them? The act of unrolling this calendar, putting it on your wall, and every single week that bubble is filled in that black mark is marking it off forever. Have something to show, not just for your years, but for every single dot that you've filled in that you really lived that week. You made something of it. You can check it out at dailystoke.com slash m-m-calendar. This is the most powerful part of momentumore. Senika says that the person who has gone to bed doing everything that they could have done that day.

When you awake in the morning, if you are so lucky, it's a bonus. You're happy in the morning because you've been given an extra try. You're playing with house money. And so if I can leave you this with this idea of Memento Mori, I think it'll make you better. And that's why I carry this reminder with me. It's powerful. Use it wisely. This is the Daily Stoic coin. I'm as proud of

making this as I am of any of my books. Tens of thousands of people all over the world have them. I see them. They bring it out of their pocket. They say, look at this every single day. It's changed my life. I hope it'll do the same for you. You can check it out at store.dailysteelic.com. And I think it says that you can't buy more life, but you can acquire fearlessness. You can stop being afraid of death. And when you cease to be afraid of death, when you stop worrying about what looms way off in the future, what you get, what you get is right now. You get the present moment. So the Stoics think about this exercise of momentum or they meditate on their mortality,

they envision their own death, they plan for their own death, they practice for their own death, so that it ceases to waste their time, to waste their energy, it ceases to intimidate them, and they can give themselves the gift of the present moment right now. And you can do that.

Don't be afraid, get yourself some fearlessness, don't worry about death. While you're here, Epicurus says death is not here. And when death is here, he says you are not here. And so we think about death because it empowers us now here in life. And that's what momentum Ori is ultimately about. How many people sort of realize that life is short after they've already wasted so much of their life, right? We talk about this, you know, like somebody gets cancer and they go, ah, you know, that's when I realized I was gonna die.

And it's like, you knew from birth, you were, you were gonna die. It was, it's like, it's not like this is up for debate, right? Like every, every person that's ever born, it knows they're gonna die, but then we deny that fact. I'm gonna send you guys one of these momentum worry things that we, that I do for day or so.

Do you know that expression? Or do you have one? Oh, I'm pretty sure you don one of these momentum worry things that we that I do for daily. So do you know that expression? Or do you have one? I appreciate you. Amazing. But to me, what I love about momentum worry, I mean, on the back, Marcus says, you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

I think about that. But I actually really love Seneca. Seneca says, he says, it's wrong to think of death in the future. So like, you go like, okay, you know, I'm gonna die at 100. So I have how much life do I have left, right? That you're moving towards death.

He says like, no, the time that passes belongs to death. So the way to think about it is that you guys have already died a quarter of your life, right? Like you've died 25 years. So this is the time that passes belongs to death. This is we're dying every day, every minute. And I think what do you think about it that way that you're, that everything you spend time on,

you're paying for with life is a fundamentally different way to go through the world because then when someone tries to guilt you into doing something that doesn't need to be done or as you said when you're wasting time being anxious about something dreading something that's happening, or even just think during the pandemic, like when this first happened, the people are like, oh, two weeks, I'll wait it out. And then like, oh, life's going to go back to normal in June. I'll just wait until June. And it's like, well, here we are 13 months later. And you're still

waiting it out. You this could have been the best year of your life. And for me in a lot of ways, it was one of the best years of my life, not in the way that I thought, but in terms of the amount of time that I spent with my kids in terms of the writing that I got done. You know, I didn't travel to Finland like I was supposed to, but I did go on a road trip across the United States. You have to adjust and be flexible,

but you really can live every minute if you choose to. Definitely. Perception. I think it's really, really interesting to just think of the fact that you die as a good thing. Because I've been talking about this a lot this last year because death has been such like in the forefront.

It's literally floating in the air. You can catch it at any moment. Exactly. And I take that with a great assault, but because that reason, the fact that we die is what makes everything meaningful. It's like the second today or like the relationship I make tomorrow or the occurrence that I have next week is only meaningful because I

die. If I was immortal, I could do that a million times. It wouldn't mean as much. Like, our conversation right now wouldn't mean as much, but we are having this in the limited time that we have. And like, now we are one, you know, hour, I guess, closer to death, which means that it's valuable. Like these conversations, these relationships, these like experiences are valuable because, you know, we have that limited time to offer. Yeah, it's, it's interesting though.

I think sometimes people miss the idea of momentum more. So, momentum more is not like, you're gonna die, everything's meaningless. Like, go have an orgy or go try heroin, right? It's not, to me, it's not like nothing matters at anarchy because it's not for sure that the world is going to end tomorrow. Right? Like if the world was going to end tomorrow, if you for sure knew everything was being wiped off the planet,

that would sort of throw everything into a state of flux. For the still, because I think it's that life could end tomorrow. So you don't know, but it could. So how do you live in a way that leaves no regrets, but also doesn't create regrets when you happen to be alive tomorrow? So it's really, I think just about, as you said, making every minute count. So I think about it's like, this could be the last email that I sent. It's not life is meaningless. So I'm not going to send the email. It's, I'm going to actually be here as I write the email or you know,

have this conversation with you or even like eating a sandwich. This could be the last sandwich I eat. I'm not going to rush through it to get to the other side because the other side could be death I'm going to actually show up even if it's something as been all is eating a sandwich Marcus really says don't live as if you had endless years ahead of you He says death shadows over you death looms over you while you're living and able he says do good, right? The present is all we have the stoic say. What's happened is happened. We can never do that again. The future, the future is uncertain. It is unknown, but the present, this moment, this moment you're spending on your phone,

this moment is all you have for certain. Put the phone down, put your anxiety away, let your regrets go, and focus on how you can use this moment. While you're good and able, Mark's really says, be good. While you're alive, live, Memento Mori, you can leave life right now, let that determine what you do in saying things. That's the essence of the stoic way.

There's two words that come to us from the ancients that I think we should remind ourselves of, repeat to ourselves in any and every situation we're in. You win the lottery, you strike it rich, you get recognized, you get an award, you say to yourself, I'm a mentor, I'm a worry, remember you will die, you go through shit, you go through trouble, someone cheats on you. Someone betrays you. Someone lies to you.

Someone steals from you. Someone gets what you earned. Someone gets promoted over you. You say to yourself, momentum-mory. Remember that I will die. You could leave life right now, Marx really said. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

You get in a fight with your girlfriend or your boyfriend. your parents say something mean or let you down. Your neighbor pisses you off. You break your leg, you blow out your knee, you fall out of love with someone. You're stressed out by work, your kids are sick. You say to yourself, Memento Mori,

life is short, I'm going to die. And what that means is you can't take any of this seriously, you can't let it weigh on you, you can't hold on to it, you can't let it puff you up either. If you're rich, you're famous, you have a million Instagram followers, you just got hired, you just got into Harvard, you just got nominated for a Nobel Prize, you just got a call from the president, you just got a promotion, you just got to raise the men to a morning. You will die, you can't take any of this with you. It pales in comparison to the idea of eternity. How many people have come before you, had had these same honors and where are they now?

They're fucking dead just like you will be. What Marcus really said is this practice of momentum or you're saying to the good things and to the bad things in life that we will die. It's a reminder that helps you accept the good things without arrogance and to let the bad things go within difference. Your plane is delayed, your stress, your tired, your hungry, your frustrated, your cynical. You say, Memento Mori, I'm going to die. What does any of this mean? Why am I taking any of it so seriously? Why am I letting it get to me? What's three hours here or three hours there? Remember, you are going to die.

What you do control is whether you waste time getting upset by this, whether you waste time taking it personally, whether you're the best in the world at what you do, or you're an unpaid intern, whether your work is being beloved by the critics or savaged by the critics, whether you have more opportunities than you know what to do with,

whether you can't get the one shot known will even give you a chance. Whether you have all the money you need or you can barely get by, you say, Memento Mori, remember I will die. None of this matters in light of that. Whether you're having sex with a beautiful supermodel, whether you're putting your kid down to bed, whether you're sitting there in your pajamas eating cereal, or you are standing in front of a prestigious audience,

Memento Mori, you will die. Is this how you want to spend your time? Are you wasting it, or are you living it? Are you embracing it, or are you letting it escape from your grasp? Memento Mori, remember I will die. You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think, whatever your experience and whatever you're going through, however awesome your life is, however frustrating it is

right now. Memento Mori, remember you will die. This too shall pass. You must not forget that. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Thank you so much for supporting Daily Stoke. It means a lot and it helps us when you like and subscribe and comment on our videos. When you follow us on social media, we're at Daily Stoke on pretty much every platform.

You can also check out dailystoke.com slash store. That's how we keep these videos high quality and ad free. If you want to support us by one of our awesome philosophically inspired products, thank you for all the support. So the the Memento Mori thing has been like of an unexpected vein because for myself too I like to people what that is. So Mementoumore is this idea, it just means remember death, or remember your mortality. And I think it's probably, it's not only one of the most powerful themes

in all of ancient philosophy, specifically stoshism, but in basically all of ancient art as well. Like the most beautiful painters used to paint pictures of skulls and dancing skeletons or decaying bodies. And so this is imagery of the inevitable decay, the entropy of life is this timeless theme that basically goes all the way up to modern art and then it's just like weird ass shapes and stuff. So we stopped using art as a tool to remind us of human primal things and started using

it as a status symbol. You know what I mean? And so what the Stoics are so much of meditations and and Seneca's writing is just talking about how easy it is to forget that you'll die or to have the wrong attitude about death. One of my favorite things from Seneca, he goes like, do not think that you're moving towards death. He was like every second that passes is death. So don't think about it as like, oh, I'm dying in the future and I should be prepared for that.

Think about the fact that we're dying every day. That you're just... Why is that better? It's just a reminder, it's not like death is this thing in the future, so I'm gonna dick around today. It's that like the hour that I spent on the couch, I died one hour of my death.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And his point is that so many people think that there's life and death, but there are ways of living that are essentially a form of being dead, and that this is in fact how most people die. What most people live,

there's this sort of haunting messed up story in Santa and one of the emperors is sort of like walking down this row of, you know, condemned prisoners and the prisoners pleading for his life. Please don't kill me. And the emperor looks at him and he's like, you think you're alive? You know, because this man's horrible way of living was already death, you know? And so that just, I think it so resonates with people because it's so the opposite of how modern life is set up. People die in hospitals far from our house.

Who spends time with old people? We are so segregated, even by age, right? There's been so many medical advancements that death doesn't feel random. It feels like it's something you're fault. Like, if you eat healthy and you're a good person, obviously you'll live a long time. And on average you will, but that doesn't mean that non-smokers don't get lung cancer all the fucking time, and you can't be one of those people. That doesn't

mean that people don't get hit with tree branches, you know, and die, or that doesn't mean that countries don't go to war for no reason, and lots you know like life is tragic and it always has been for all of human history and so that's definitely I think the most powerful one and it's something I I mean I keep on my desk I mean so I wear this ring it's like a reminder but I have I bought it on online it's a chunk of a tombstone and it jet like from some I don't know how this came to be. I hope nobody stole it, but it's from like an old Victorian grave,

so a couple hundred years old. And it just has the word dad on it. And it's so fucking interesting. Like I want to start asking people, what is some weird shit that they have? That is so interesting, especially knowing your views on death and being a dad recently. Yeah, and so it's like, what crazy?

I'm this guy, was a father? Did you seek out the word dad? I was looking for something like that, and when I found it, and I was like, that's it. That's the reminder that I wanna have all the time. Fuck, that one really hit me, I'm not sure why. Yeah. The word dad, that it's an actual tombstone.

Because it's that, because what you're thinking about is what that person meant to other people. Yes, yes, yes. And that this is something clearly people identify, he, that was part of his identity and he's not here. And not only is he not here, I don't even fucking know his name, nobody does. Not only is nobody know his name,

but at some point after his death, even the ground he was buried in, like, suffered an earthquake or somebody stole it. So it's just, there's a humility in that, and I think a reminder to be present, right? Like, but let's say I'm working at my desk, and I'm writing, and my son is almost three. He comes running and he's like, yeah, dad, look at this. You know, that's like a, I'm gonna get this writing done because I'm important, or it's important to me, but I am not gonna ignore this thing. I'm gonna, I'm not saying I'm gonna

quit my work and not focus on it at all, but I am not gonna ignore this moment to be this thing that's important to me. Do you know what I mean? So I, I have an evolving sense of what my relationship to death should be. So for a very long time, it was patently obvious to me that I was going to die, but that we're living in a period where it is conceivable that we'll be able to hit escape velocity from a health perspective. And that by the time we're 80, 90, if we're able to live that long, that they can add a year and a day to every year that we live or whatever. Well, you just live a lot longer than humans have conceived of life as being.

Correct. So I thought, okay, that's interesting to me because I want to live my life in such a way where my limited amount of time does not impact the size of my dreams. So it wasn't a denial of death. It was just kind of a cool escape valve for me to, even as I got older, to continue to have big dreams that, you know, sort of by any stretch of the imagination would probably go on beyond me, but because tomorrow I was never guaranteed anyway, even when I was 16, that there's only that the sort of false or maybe a better way to think

of it is from an actuarial table standpoint, you are probably going to live long enough for you to have that 40-year dream, or that six-year dream, or whatever. So because of that, you just, you do. You have these long-ranging dreams. And I felt like because I had long-ranging dreams, I was able to do some pretty extraordinary things,

but only because I was thinking so long-term. So okay, as I get older, I don't wanna stop having these long-term dreams. So I really allowed myself to soak in the notion of, hey, you might live forever. So keep having these big long-range dreams. Now, hearing enough people talk about momentum, or whatever, I started thinking, all right, people that I really respect are telling me that I need to really think closely about the notion of dying. So I thought, okay, let me really stop and inspect how that would impact me. What does that change in terms of the way that I live or how I perceive life or whatever?

And so far, I will say because I'm already like, it is at the absolute core of my being to only do things that matter, to love deeply, to connect to the people that I love, to not waste time all of that. I personally don't need that reminder. Many people do and it's very useful for that. That isn't the reminder that I need. I find that it's actually, it feels important to acknowledge the inevitability currently of my death, but at the same time, I find that now I have to fight harder to have long

range plans, and I don't like the way that feels. So it is, it's seemingly there's a contradiction between being present and doing or planning big things. But I'm not sure that there is, I don't know exactly how to solve for it, but let's look at the evidence, right? Marcus Aurelius. Here's a guy he's reminding himself of how ephemeral the emperors who came before him were. He's reminding himself of the inevitability of death. He's saying over and over again the importance of being present, not being driven by anger. We can't say like this guy didn't accomplish incredible things, right? Like that he, that because of that he just stayed in bed all day.

I think what he's saying is like let's do the right thing for the right reason. You look at Seneca, same thing, talking over and over again about the death, about the inevitability of death, the meaninglessness of posthumous fame, etc. And yet still sits down and writes these essays that continue to be read by millions of people 2,000 plus years after his death. I think what it's about is about stripping out the low grade anxiety or denial or whatever we have and being able to focus everything in that moment. So when Seneca is saying like, you will die. Today could be the last day of your life.

He's not saying quit what you're doing and go have an orgy or go shoot up heroin just to see what it's like. He's saying live today like a complete day. So like what, as I worked on stillness as the key is something I was thinking about a lot. He's like, okay, I could die before this book gets published. What happens to me to someone finish it? Does it get published? Whatever? Does it sit in a drawer? None of that's really my concern.

What, nor is it published, whatever, does it sit in a drawer? None of that's really my concern. What, nor is it in my control, right? Even if I write in a will exactly, Nabakov, I think, wrote very clearly, like destroy my manuscripts after my death. Really? Yeah, and lots of authors have done this. And nobody listened, you know, Kafka, same thing.

We only know about these works because they're, they would be upset that we know who they are. So what do I control? What I do control is did I do everything I could today, right? Did I lead like, is the book complete as of today? Do you know what I mean? Is it as complete up until the point I was able to complete it? So I go, you know, the first two thirds are the book

that it could be as of today. That's what I do. Does that make sense? It does, but I don't know that it hits me emotionally. So, let's try to unpack that a little bit. So, if you're saying, like, hey, I'm going to do my best and I'm going to be present, which we actually didn't address, and I don't think is a self-evident realization when one thinks about their death, which would be interesting to hear your thoughts

around why that is your association. I begin to think about, so if I were writing a book, first of all, I'm such a process writer that I would be the type that's like, bury the fuck a manuscript, don't ever let it out. People would have no, like they just wouldn't believe how scandalously bad, my early drafts, of anything are.

So I wouldn't think of it in any other way than the following. Did I sincerely pursue making this great today? Yes or no? That's what I totally agree with. That's what it's about. He's saying like live every day as a complete day and then when you wake up tomorrow, you're grateful.

I hope you like this video. I hope you subscribe. But what I really want you to subscribe to is our daily stoic email, one bit of stoic wisdom, totally for free to the largest community of stoics ever in existence. You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. There's no spam, you can unsubscribe it anytime.

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