SR10 · Module
Memento Mori and the View from Above
Pierre Hadot's spiritual exercises: contemplating death to strip away triviality (Seneca, Yalom), zooming out to the View from Above (Marcus Aurelius), reclaiming the shortness of life, and realising that 'no one really cares' about social vanity.
Cues
Showing 7 of 7 cues
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”
“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.”
“I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later.”
“Let your every deed and thought be those of one who might depart from life this very moment.”
“Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment.”
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”