Memento mori: Remember you will die

"To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils."

- Socrates, a classical Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Western philosophy.

Some fear it; some others welcome it; a few fools live as though they will never meet it; but death, that stalker from whom many spend their whole life, running from; is inevitable, and is as concealed as with a drowning man not knowing which drop of water his last breath did stop. Hence, there is nothing to be fearful about death.

Await it with wonder, and step across a threshold into a new world: unknown, and unimaginable; and go like a falling star; one of a million lights in the vast sky that flares up for a brief moment, only to disappear into the endless night forever.

For your life, on planet earth, is but a briefest moment in time and space.

Relationships

Hence, while here, define it by what is etched in the lives and hearts of those you have touched; and do not worry about what will be etched on a tombstone; because, if you live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched; death will end life, but not a relationship. Certain moments in our relationships go on forever even after you are no more; they still go on, etched in the memory of the living, on into infinity.

Thus, the secret of living and dying peacefully is to etch a legacy into the minds of those you have encountered and touched. Through the stories they share about you, you will live on forever.

Hence, while living, ensure that you live in such manner that you do not die twice: once when you stop breathing, and the second time when no one speaks about you; and you cease to be even a memory in the minds of the living.

Thus, meditate - early and often - on the art of dying; so that you succeed later in doing it right, because you need die but once; and if you do not do it properly, the transition will be troublesome.

Inescapable, universal, uplifting: the only certainty in life is that it will one day end. Regardless of race, religion, geographical area, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: awaiting death.

Death may be a grand mystery, but a certainty.

That knowledge is perhaps the defining feature of the human condition; and, as far as we know, we alone are capable of contemplating the prospect of our demise.

Throughout time, every major religion, philosophy, and spiritual train of thought has sought to explain this mystery. It touches the life of every man and woman, uniting the entire human race under a cloud of inevitable mortality.

The rich and the poor alike meet the same end; the black and the white both go to the grave; the powerful and the humble all leave this planet eventually, whether they like it or not.

Hence, in life, in living, while living: gain wisdom, will, and wit; purity, probity, pluck, and grit; and try to make the bad people good, and the good people nice. Be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind; and by being and doing so, you shall beget an earthly paradise. Death is nothing at all.

Nothing will change after your death. Everything will remain exactly as it was; untouched, unchanged. Whatever you were to someone else, you will remain that without a ghost of a shadow upon it. There will be absolute and unbroken continuity.

Eternity

Your genes will flow in the blood of generations to come, until eternity; and as has been with those dead before you.

Death is but a negligible accident; and if you have lived right, in spite of this mishap, you will live on in the minds of men as well; not just in the genes. Immortality is not, never dying. No one is promised a tomorrow; and yet, love is how you stay alive, even in the tomorrow, after you are gone; and because you were a loving person, you become an immortal soul. Remember: Despite what man may believe, death never comes at the right time.

Death always comes like a thief: suddenly, silently, and unexpectedly. If you have lived right, you will not care if you die tomorrow.

In ancient Rome, when a general returns in glory after victory in a campaign, it is customary to have a victory procession through the streets of Rome. In this procession, he is always accompanied by a slave whose job it was to remind him that his triumph would not last forever: "Memento mori," the slave would whisper into the general's ear; "remember that you will die". Compare this with what is happening today, where the triumphant live as though they live for eternity and you will realize what a comedown it has been for humanity over the past 2000 years - at least so far as bloated egos are concerned. Throughout history, different mythologies and theologies have explained the nature of death in countless ways, ranging from total annihilation to immediate life after death.

Thus, it will not be wrong to say, humans invented death - not the fact of it, of course; but its meaning as a life event imbued with cultural and psychological significance. However, even after many millennia of cultural development, we do not seem to be sure exactly what it is we have invented. The more we try to pin down the precise nature of death, the more elusive it becomes; and the more elusive it becomes, the more debatable our definitions of it.

Organisms

Interestingly, scientific research into single-celled organisms reveals that the nature of life, on a cellular level, does not automatically include a self-destruct mechanism for death. In other words, it appears that death is an unnatural part of life. Yet despite this, everything on earth eventually dies.

Many lines of religious thought simply accept the inevitability of death and instead try to offer better alternatives that await the faithful in the afterlife. These ideas bring comfort to many people who have lost loved ones or are facing death themselves, but they leave others wondering: "Why must death exist? The mystery of death is so profound that, despite the millennia of religious doctrine, mythology, scientific research, and the many theories and explanations that exist on the subject, people today are more confused than ever about it.

Most of us would wish for a peaceful death after a long and well-lived life. Of course, not all of us get our wish.

For some, death comes sooner than we would like, and that is one reason to fear it. However, only recently has it become commonplace for death to come later than we would like. Death can now be deferred by mechanical and medicinal means for days, weeks, months or years - and that brings with it fears of its own: of impotence, dependency and pain. Nothing in the way our societies are constructed is at all suited to this new situation.

Man, born with a cry and dying with a sigh, believes in the lie that time will heal everything. Time is an absurdity, an abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. As we age beyond a certain age, death is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield. Thus, as each of us await death, it is best to form the habit of nightly composing our thoughts and practice the remembrance of death. There is not another practice which so intensifies life.

Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise.

It should be part of the full expectancy of life; and Memento Mori is a prayer to remember daily.

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