Do It Even Harder | What Is Memento Mori (Explained In 5 Minutes)

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:32Ryan Holiday?

  Do it even harder.

• 0:37Ryan Holiday?

  They told Socrates to stop, to stop asking questions, to stop corrupting the youth with all his crazy ideas. They told Cato to stop too, to stop getting in the way, stop rooting out corruption, filibustering, protecting Rome's old ways. They did more than just tell these men to stop. They criticized them, they jeered them, they offered bribes and temptations. When none of that worked, they threatened to kill them. And do you know how Socrates and Cato responded? To borrow a line from the great Michael Scott, "They started doing it even harder." A Stoic is not deterred by difficulty or threats. A Stoic doesn't go along to get along. They don't mind standing alone. They don't mind being a thorn in the side, provided that it's a thorn in the side of corrupt interests

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  or the powers that be. That was the ethos of the so-called Stoic opposition. They were willing to throw themselves into the spokes, to fight, to resist, insist on what was right, even though they were outnumbered, even though they were relatively powerless. So it must go for us. What is right is right. We will not be deterred or intimidated. We will not be bought off. We will resist until the end.

• 1:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's a great quote from Richard Feynman, like, "If you can't explain it to a five-year-old or a first grader, you don't actually understand it." I think if you can't be brief with it, if you can't get to the point, if you can't explain a complicated topic quickly, you probably don't understand it. That's what I love about the Stoics. I love how brief and tight Marx-Realist's meditations are. That's why I try to keep my books short. It's why these podcast episodes aren't super long. Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about memento mori, which you've heard. It is a pretty tight expression, I will say, memento mori, remember you will die. I want to go into this concept, arguably one of the most complicated and incomprehensible topics in the world, right? What happens when we die? Why do we die?

• 2:34Ryan Holiday?

  What does it mean to be a fragile, human being, whose life can be taken from them at any moment? How can we talk about that in as brief a window as possible? And in today's episode, we're going to do that. We're going to talk Memento Mori in five minutes, right? And I'm not rushing. I don't want you to think that I'm rushing through this because the Stoics would say, why are you rushing, right? Don't rush towards death. Soak in every moment, but also you can't afford to waste time. You can't afford frivolous, extraneous, needlessly verbose, complicated, stupid, annoying, noxious, bloviating explanation. So I'll get right to this episode and we're going to talk about Memento Mori in just

• 3:17Ryan Holiday?

  five minutes, like a really tight, helpful summary of one of the most life-changing topics and concepts in philosophy in Stoicism that I have yet to come across.

• 3:29Ryan Holiday?

  Again, in the ancient world, life was very fragile. And yet, even then, they had to remind themselves that they could go at any moment. And I think death, as we have become successful as a society, as we've become more and more insulated from tragedy, has receded from the forefront of our consciousness. Shakespeare famously said that every third thought after he retired would be of his grave. I don't know if it has to be that often, but at least once a day, take a minute to think, I don't know how much time I have left. As Seneca says, we go through life afraid of some things as if we're mortal, but then we treat time as if we are immortal, as if we have an unlimited amount of it, and we don't. The tragedy is, by the time we realize we've been taking time for granted, it's too late.

• 4:14Ryan Holiday?

  One of the most life-changing exercises, as far as Memento Mori goes for me, came from Seneca. Seneca says, don't see death as something in the future that you're moving towards. See it as something that's happening right now. He says, you're dying every minute. You are dying every day. He says, the time that passes belongs to death. So I don't think about the fact that I'm 34 and that means... ...per actuary tables, I've got 45 years left. I think instead that I've died 34 years. I've died however many minutes I've spent talking to you. So why am I doing it? Because this is important to me. If it wasn't important to me, I shouldn't do it. Right? Since I am doing it, I should do it as if it matters. I should give it my best.

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  Memento Mori to me puts everything in perspective. As Marcus really says, it shows you what's essential and what's inessential. He has this great test. Marcus says, "Ask yourself, am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do blank anymore?" And I think about that, the things that we spend so much time doing. Then we wonder, where does our time go? Right? We spent it on frivolous, stupid things. So for the Stoics, memento mori was this humbling bit of perspective. It put everything in sharp focus. And I think even one of the most haunting exercises in Stoicism about memento mori, it doesn't just apply to you, but also the people you love. Marcus really says, "As you tuck your child into bed at night, say to yourself, they may not make it to the morning." Is that supposed to be detaching you from not feeling what you feel towards them? It's the opposite.

• 5:38Ryan Holiday?

  It's telling you, don't rush through this because what you're rushing towards is death. Slow down, be present, cherish the person while you have them.

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's not that life is short, Seneca says, it's that we waste a lot of it.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  The practice of memento mori, the meditation on death, is one of the most powerful and eye-opening things that there is. We built this memento mori calendar for Daily Stoic to illustrate that exactity, that your life, in the best-case scenario, is 4,000 weeks. Are you gonna let those weeks slip by? Or are you going to seize them? The act of unrolling this calendar, putting it on your wall, and every single week, that bubble is filled in, that black mark is marking it off forever. Have something to show, not just for your years, but for every single dot that you've filled in, that you really lived that week. You made something of it. And check it out at dailystoic.com/mmcalendar.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  This is the most powerful part of Memento Mori. Seneca says that the person who has gone to bed doing everything that they could have done that day. When you awake in the morning, if you are so lucky, it's a bonus. You're happy in the morning because you've been given an extra try. You're playing with house money. And so if I can leave you with this idea of Memento Mori, I think it'll make you better. And that's why I carry this reminder with me. It's powerful. Use it wisely. This is the Daily Stoic coin. I'm as proud of making this as I am of any of my books. Tens of thousands of people all over the world have them. I see them, they bring it out of their pocket. They say, "Look at this every single day. It's changed my life." I hope it'll do the same for you. You can check it out at store.dailystoic.com.