Why Thinking About Your Death Will Save Your Life

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1:46Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

2:01You should spend more time in cemeteries. I promise it's not depressing. And there's a reason that the ancients, like the Stoics, actively meditated on their mortality, this idea of memento mori. So here's why spending more time around dead people thinking about death will make you better. It might seem like spending time in cemeteries is depressing, but it isn't. And it's not only not depressing, it's really important. Cemeteries remind us of our death. They remind us of our mortality. But in meditating on the shortness of life, the Stoics tell us, we are We're invigorated. We're reminded of what's important.

2:39We're given a chance to actually live. The big mistake is to think of death as something that's far off in the future, right? You understand, oh, at the end of your life, you'll end up somewhere like this. But that's precisely wrong, Seneca tells us. Death isn't this thing that happens to us once at the end. He said, it's not that we're moving forward towards death. It's that death is happening right now. In the midst of life, we are in death. Seneca wanted us to understand that in fact we're dying constantly. He says we're dying every minute, we're dying every day. The time that passes belongs to death.

3:13It's not at the end of your life that you die once. In fact at the end of your life you have died all the years that you have lived and that's one of the things that you feel when you're in the cemetery. You're reminded that death is all around you all the time and that what you take back when you go to your actual life when you return to the real world is a reminder that every second that's ticking by is consequential. It matters. It's the most important thing in the world because it's the one thing you can never get back. Even as you watch this video, you are dying. As you waste time on the internet, as you waste time chasing things that you don't need, as you get caught up in gossip or grievances, you are paying for that with the most important thing there is, which is your time, which is your life.

3:56Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. The Stokes would want you to understand that they would much rather you live a short life, one of dignity and honor and decency and value and character than to live for a long time but to sustain that life by compromising, by betraying, by being a bad person. And they would also say like life can kick this shit out of you and it will. This guy, this is the Will Barger tomb. This guy was scalped by Native Americans in the river here in 1832. We can put the blood feud between the Native Americans and the pioneers aside and just go, that would be awful.

4:36He was scalped and somehow survived. Think about how much pain he would have been in. Think about how hard it would have been to continue. Think about what the rest of his life was like. Seneca has this great line he talks about how sometimes even to live is an act of courage. To not despair, to not give up, to keep fighting, to cling to life not in a pathetic way but in a courageous way. Obviously it's worth remembering that all of our ancestors suffered horribly. They went through almost unimaginable ordeals and the perseverance and the fortitude that sustained them in that. It's just a good reminder in our relatively cushy modern problems that you can get through this, that you come from people who got through this.

5:18And when you walk through a cemetery and you see the families that carried on after the loss of a loved one, you see the dates and you realize they lived through the Spanish flu or the Civil War or all sorts of horrible things. They kept going, they didn't give up. The Stoics talk about it's shameful to give up when you've still got something left, when there's still life you could live, there's still good you should do. And whenever I'm somewhere like this, that's something that always pops into my mind. We protect our property, we safeguard our money, but then we're fruitless like the most valuable thing there is.

5:54Seneca said it's the craziest thing in the world that we are reckless with the thing we should be most miserly about. I was talking about our time. Time is the most precious resource. It's the only non-renewable resource. You're not getting any more and it's tick, tick, ticking away every second. And yet because you're afraid to say no, because you have trouble focusing, because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, because your priorities are out of whack, you're wasting your time. You are paying for this thing with your life. Whether we're talking about scrolling or stupid meetings or your neighbor who won't stop gossiping or that person who's always stirring up drama in your life, you are wasting the most precious thing that you have.

6:37you are doing things that you shouldn't be doing, only going to hit you what you have paid for that end of your life when suddenly you are desperate for time. Every single person in this cemetery put stuff off as we all do, telling themselves they would get to it later. Maybe they got to some of it, but they certainly did not get to all of it. And that is the tragedy of procrastination. That is the arrogance of procrastination. The presumption that you have later, that you will get another chance. You could be good today, Mark Schreler says in meditations, But instead, you choose tomorrow because you think you have tomorrow, because you think magically tomorrow you're going to be the person that's doing the thing that the person today is not doing.

7:16Don't do it later. Do it now. Now you have a chance. Now you can do it for sure. Don't regret not doing it later. Do it now. Better at managing your time. Get better at saying no. Get your priorities in order or you will waste your life.

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8:59There's a famous line in an Aeschylus play, Agamemnon. Cassandra is the prophet that can see the future, but she's cursed that no one will ever listen. And she says when she comes home, knowing that Agamemnon is going to be murdered by his wife, She says, I can smell the open grave. She can smell that death is on this person. They're marked for it, but they don't know it. I'm just sitting here in this cemetery and they just reinterred or worked on this grave. Someone who's been dead for 65 years. We all have that mark of death on us. We think about this idea like, what would I do if I found out I had cancer, if I got a terminal diagnosis?

9:40What if someone could predict my death? But you do have a terminal diagnosis. Someone can predict your death. all of us are mortal the doctor knew with absolute certainty when we were born that we were going to die it's just that because we feel healthy it's just because the average lifespan is incredibly long these days in a way that the ancients couldn't have even imagined the average person living to because infant mortality then was so high and we think we're going to live forever we think we're the exception and we're not it's going to happen for all of us we have to live accordingly we have to make the right decisions as a result we have to cut out the things that are wasting our time.

10:15Steve Jobs talked about this in his famous commencement address. He was talking about how life is short. It's uncertain for all of us, as it tragically was for him. He said it's too short to spend it living somebody else's life, following somebody else's track. That's one of my favorite questions from Mark Shrelos in Meditations. He says, you're afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore? And by this, I take it to mean all the indignities and stupid things that we spend our time doing. Like, do you want to live forever so you can go to the DMV more? so you can scroll on your phone more, so you can hold grudges more, so you can covet more things, that's not a life worth extending.

10:52Okay, so I'm not saying that life is meaningless and you should just die. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying you should try to live a life that is worth being long. That's the tragedy, Seneca says, how many people at their end of their life, all they have to show for it is a large number. That's not what we're after. That's not meaningful. that's not what philosophy is fighting to try to make us. So this decision to cut out the inessential, to do what actually matters, to live the life we are meant to live, to be brave and to be authentic, to be real, to chase and value the right things, that's what memento mori reminds us.

11:29So this is the Kessilis family tomb. They came to Bastrop in the 1850s and they built a little building on Main Street, which housed a shop that he owned and he built a house down the street. His son, Will, who this is him, that's the father, this is Will, carried on the business when his father died in 1901. Well, I own that building now. The building has changed hands dozens of times in the decades since it left the Kesslis family, which, by the way, is what happens to all our possessions. The things you love, the things you care about, eventually someone is going to possess them. That is to say if they don't throw them away.

12:07There's a story about Epictetus. He had this lamp that was stolen and you'd think he'd be upset. Instead he goes, look you can only lose what you have and he goes back and he replaces it the next day with something cheaper. But the funny part is that after he died one of his students bought it for a lot of money. He wanted to possess something that Epictetus had possessed. Of course totally missing the point of the lesson. Now again the lesson isn't you should never have anything and you shouldn't care about anything you should give away all your possessions like a monk. No, it's just a reminder that as the Stoics say, we only own this stuff in trust.

12:38We have it temporarily, not just the job, not just the house, not just the place we currently stand or operate, but everything in our life is only ours for as long as we are lucky to have it. I heard someone say, and I think about this with where I live on this ranch out not far from here, he says, the bank is just letting me make payments on it. Like you don't even own it. You have it temporarily. And if you can think about it that way, you're not only going to be more insured against the ups and downs in life, you're going to know the proper perspective on things. It helps me relax with my children.

13:12I don't have to take everything so seriously. I don't have to stress about everything. I don't own it. We remind ourselves that we don't really own this stuff, that it's only ours temporarily. So the day when we have to give it up, whether it's while we're living or at the end of our life, we're okay with that. We're okay giving it back. I I actually had a friend of mine who died not that long ago, and he wrote about this saying, I'm ready to give the gift back. That's what he was saying about his life itself, ready to return the gift. And that's a very stoic idea. All of it, it's only temporary.

13:42We only get it for a little bit. Who was the most famous person in this cemetery? Who was this person who had this monument erected to them? How big was their obituary in the newspaper? how many people attended their funeral, how many things still bear their name in this little town or in this state. Marcus Aurelius would say it doesn't matter, right? He says those who long for posthumous famer, he says they're chasing the wrong thing. He says because one, they won't be around to remember it. And even if people do remember them, inevitably we all are forgotten. You know, there's still an enormous column in Rome in honor of Marcus Aurelius' achievement.

14:23But what good does it do him hoping to be vindicated by history he says that's also empty because people in the future are going to be pretty stupid and annoying and short-sighted too even if you are remembered by the next generation or the next generation he says like candles lighting each other eventually it sputters and goes out he lists all the emperors who come before him you know he says who remembers the name vespasian or this emperor that emperor and those are some of the most famous people in the world. You and I are almost certainly not those people. So to chase fame, to chase attention, to think that you can't transcend death that way is silly and it is disproven by the historical record.

15:03Even the few exceptions to that rule, like a Marcus Aurelius, it doesn't do them any good. So meditating on our mortality, it reminds us to stop chasing things that don't matter. It reminds us that legacy is not for us. We don't get to enjoy it. So what we should do is be present here in this present moment because that's the one thing we do have for certain. And what about the wealthiest person in the cemetery who paid to put up this enormous monument? Again, does it really matter? You don't get to take the money with you when you die. There's the famous Thomas Gray poem, Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard, and he talks about how all the paths of glory lead ultimately to the grave.

15:45Everything evens out here. In this way, we're all made equal again. I'm not saying that money is bad. I'm not saying that providing for your family after you're gone isn't also important, but it's just a reminder as we chase more than we could ever possibly need, as we give up the most valuable thing in the world, which is our life, which is our happiness, which is our time in exchange for more and more and more, often doing things that make us miserable so we could have this thing that we hope to someday enjoy in the future, which is not actually guaranteed. Cemeteries remind us what's actually important.

16:21They remind us to prioritize what's actually important. No one is going to remember how much money you had. No one cares about that. You're not going to care about that in your last moments. And in fact, you would give all of that money back to have a few more minutes with the people you love, the people you neglected, the things you took for granted, the people, by the way, you said you were doing it all for. You would give everything to have a few more minutes with them. Right now you have it. That's what memento mori reminds us of. Your wealth will disappear, your body will decay, eventually you'll be forgotten.

16:56It happens to all of us. Right outside Rome there's the famous Appian Way. It's paved with these stones that have been smoothed over by centuries and centuries of traffic and it's lined with the tombs and graves of some of the most famous and powerful Roman families ever. We think because most of them have been totally forgotten. That was something that Marcus Aurelius said about Alexander the Great that the most powerful man in the world and his mule driver were both buried in the same earth that death is this great equalizer and so is the merciless progression of time the same is true for Seneca and Marcus Rullus and Epictetus even though we know their names we do the vast majority of people do not their fame their power their wealth did nothing to forestall the ultimate and inevitability of their death this is why they used to whisper in the ear of the Emperor in his moment of greatest triumph memento mori remember you are mortal they should also have said sick transit gloria mundi all glory is fleeting none of it lasts none of us last let's manage our egos and our ambitions accordingly so if we all end up in the same place am i saying that nothing matters that you shouldn't care that you shouldn't try you shouldn't try to make a difference i'm actually saying the exact opposite.

18:10I went for a run outside Philadelphia one time. It was snowy. I sort of got hopelessly lost and I came across this old Revolutionary War cemetery. I was looking at these little gravestones and one of them stood out. I walked up to it and what it said changed my life. It said verses on tombstones are but idly spent. The living character is the monument. It was saying it's not about how beautiful your gravestone is, how well attended your funeral is. It's not about how long you are remembered. It's about what you did in your life and I think the Stoics would say what you did with your life for the common good.

18:46Look this is a grave here surrounded by a fence. It's still well maintained. It's got a little historical placard but the person who it's honoring, Joseph Sayers, is a traitor. He was a confederate general. He was a bad person. With a good chunk of his life he raised up arms against his country fighting for arguably the worst cause in human history. Now some people can whitewash that, they can put up monuments to him, they can still celebrate him, but it's indisputable. He did a bad thing and fundamentally was a bad human being. That's the monument. How we live our life, what we do with our life.

19:22So that's the reminder. It's not that our life doesn't matter. Our life does matter. But a good life, Marcus Aurelius tells us, the fruit of a good life is good character and acts for the common good. What have you done for others? How did you spend your time what were the relationships you built did you leave this place better than you found it that's the goal of stoicism it's not i left it better than i found it and i'm remembered for all time and and my kids don't have to work hard because i left them a huge legacy no the legacy is the example that you set that your character was good that you you proved that you believed the things that you said that's the line from marcus really is that we don't talk about philosophy we try to live it right we try to put it into practice that is the ultimate lesson of memento mori not to do it later but to do it now while we still can't so in my pocket i carry this coin it's a reminder it says memento mori on the front there's a famous set of symbols you see in a lot of art a skull that's death it's flower that's life and then the hourglass that's time we're dying every minute as seneca says that we're all mortal that we're all marked for death and and that we should live accordingly.

20:31Memento mori, remember you are mortal. It has a quote from Marcus Trubius on the back. You could leave life right now, he's saying, let that determine what you do and say and think. It's not depressing, it's not demoralizing, it's invigorating, and that's what the sort of memento mori practice is all about.