Memento Mori: On Life, Death, and Love
by Life, death, and love are the holy trinity of a meaningful human existence. A meditation on fate and fatality.
“He’s not concerned with yesterday
He knows constant change is here today
He’s noble enough to know what’s right
But weak enough not to choose it
He’s wise enough to win the world
But fool enough to lose it…”
Rush (Neal Peart)
“New World Man”
Those who doubt destiny do not think clearly enough. Your life comes with an expiration date – such is the nature of a mortal existence. When the ancients commanded, “Gnothi seauton” (“Know thyself”), they understood that it meant, in part: Know your limits – know that you are limited, know that you are not a god, know that your life in this world has a conclusion, one that comes soon and unexpectedly. Live accordingly.
This defining characteristic is your destiny, the central, inescapable core of it – your inevitable fatality. Sage Heraclitus taught that all things in this world are in flux, ever changing, never still, never fixed. We are here a brief moment, as all things are, and then we are as so much vapor and smoke, gone on the breezes, replaced in a moment, forgotten in less.
Life is caught up in death. Death walks in the midst of life and makes it what it is for us – precious, rare, unpredictable, fleeting, finite. Death is not so much a dreadful and unnatural beast that destroys us as the line that circumscribes our time and gives it form – assuming we are fully conscious of the limit.
A life lived unconsciously, unaware of our limits and finitude is one where we linger too long with matters with which we can ill afford to become preoccupied. And this quickly becomes a life with no time for that which is of real value and importance. One becomes profligate with that which is dear, as if we have the hours left to us to throw about recklessly and freely, with no seriousness, no mindfulness that our sun was already setting the day we were born into this place.
“Carpe diem:” Seize the day – this was the watchword of the Metaphysical Poets. Your life is so much dust and already the grave is being dug; fill your remaining moments with life and remove any need for regrets when Death comes for you. Live fully, live meaningfully, because nothing else will truly pass for having lived.
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