The Only Certainty in Life (Memento Mori)

I’d like to think that I’m a pretty consistent reader, usually spending between 15-45 minutes a day reading. My main goal with reading is to get at least one main idea from each book and, over time, compile all those different ideas into my own ‘Jeremy’ philosophy—which is sort of what you get when you read this blog: a compilation of my life experiences and lessons I’ve learned.

Once in a while, there will be a book that really resonates with me, and the latest book to do that is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Over the past week, I’ve been nose-deep in this book.

Meditations is a collection of writings from the famous Stoic Philosopher and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Living from 121-180 AD in Italy, he was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire. Meditations is essentially the lessons and truths that Marcus learned and experienced during his life in Rome.

One of the common threads that runs through not only Meditations but the stoic philosophy as a whole, is the idea that there is only one thing for certain in life: death.

Marcus persists in talking about the fact that everyone who has ever lived before us is now dead, we too will soon be dead, and those who live after us will eventually be dead.

Seems cold-hearted and a bit dark, right?

But he’s not wrong… and he explains how this fact of life should be used to motivate us to take advantage of this short life we have to do great things and ignore the criticisms from others. The Stoics often refer to humanity as a large tree and each person as a leaf... we bloom, live, and die off to be replaced by the next.

If you trip and fall on your butt in front of a crowd, who cares? Why feel embarrassed? Nobody is going to remember that, especially in 80 years when we’ve all moved on from this life. Marcus writes, "People who are excited by posthumous fame forget the people who remember them will soon die too and those after them in turn."

Why spend 40 hours a week at a job you hate? Why not go travel the world, take a road trip, practice your hobby, start a business, talk to a stranger?

"Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present--thoughtfully, justly."

Nature did not intend for us to sit in a cubicle and watch YouTube videos all day. There’s so much more to life than that and it can be so easy to just ‘make our way’ through life.

Don’t have regrets on your death bed. Be that old person who is proud of the life they lived and all the great things they did.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us, “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”