You Think You Have Time. You Don’t.

It’s a tragedy. Too many people, Seneca says, reach the end of life with nothing to show for it but a number.🎥 VIDEO EPISODE | Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cInStI2DnI🪙 MEMENTO MORI | We have a collection of items in the Daily Stoic store to help you in your own memento mori practice, check them out here: https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help you bring those four key Stoic virtues—courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom—into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Last year, I had a very strange near-death experience. I was in Greece, and I went out for a run, and I got stung in the back of the throat by a beetle. And so, there, for somewhat absurd reasons, my life was flashing before my eyes. But that was not the first time that that ever happened. One, because I've had other near-death experiences like that, but also I actively forced myself to think about my mortality on a regular basis. This is the Stoic practice of memento mori, remembering you are mortal, remembering that you could go at any moment. And one of the ways I do that is when I travel, I try to stop in various cemeteries and just spend a little time walking around, looking at the headstones, thinking about the people buried there, thinking about the people that have come before us.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what I want to talk about in today's episode, some Stoic lessons that I've gathered from cemeteries all over the world, where, in thinking about death, I changed my life, and I think might be able to change yours.

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  This is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world, but you know what good it does the people who are buried here? Nothing. There was a guy buried in this cemetery, 250,000 people came to his funeral. That's insane. I've never even heard of this person, 250,000 people. But you know what good it did him? No good at all. Marcus Aurelius tries to remind us that people who long for posthumous fame, what they forget is that they won't be around to enjoy it. He says, "And even if you were, people are still annoying and obnoxious." It's not that special. Marcus Aurelius is remembered by history, not because he strove to be remembered, but because of how he lived his life, what he tried to do with the time that he had, what he wasn't thinking about his legacy. Legacy... Is for everyone but you.

• 1:58Ryan Holiday?

  This beautiful cemetery, this is for the people who loved those people. It doesn't do them any good. But what of the time they wasted? What of the wrong things they value? You want to think about how you're spending your time now. Are you living now? Are you appreciating it now? Death is the one certainty. It's the one thing that will happen to every person that's ever been born. It's the prophecy that never fails, they say. And yet, how many people in this cemetery were surprised by it? How many people were caught off guard? How many people thought, oh, I thought I had more time? And how many of these people wasted enormous amounts of their time, as we all do? Seneca says we protect our property, we protect our money, and yet we're so frivolous with our time.

• 2:42Ryan Holiday?

  The one thing we should be the strictest misers about, he says, we just freely hand out to people. We let it be wasted because we think we have so much of it. And we don't. Eventually, we all come to the end. And not just eventually, it could be sooner than you think. Obviously, the thing we all dread most is something happening to our kids. No parent ever wants to bury the child. And unfortunately, it's true. One day, our children will die, we ourselves will die. But the Stoics remind us that, that simply seeing death as this tragedy, this thing that's out there that could happen to you at some point in the future. He says, you actually have to think of death as something that's happening now. He says, the time that passes belongs to death. So however old your kids are, those are years that they'll never get back, that you'll never get back.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  So we have to spend our time wisely. We have to be with our kids when we're with our kids. When Marcus Aurelius tells himself, as you tuck your children in at night, say to yourself, they may not make it to the morning. What he's trying to do is make sure that he doesn't rush through this thing. Only get to do so many times. In the midst of life, we are in death. As we kill time, as time passes, it is killing us and it has gone forever. And so is that five-year-old and six-year-old and seven-year-old and eight-year-old and 18-year-old. They'll never get that again, so be there for it while it's here.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  Death is one thing that we all have in common. It's one thing that equalizes all of us. It's one thing that crosses all language, socio-economic, cultural, geographic barriers, even transcends space and time, right? Everyone who ever lived was mortal. And they all faced their own mortality as we will face our mortality. I'm in this cemetery now and most of the tombstones are in another language: Chinese, Japanese, ancient Hawaiian. And you're thinking about, yeah, these people lived in a different culture. They had different beliefs, different perceptions. Maybe they thought different things about the afterlife. All the same, they had to face this unchanging, unavoidable thing.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  And that's true for Marcus Aurelius, that's true for Seneca, that's true for Epictetus. They had to come to terms with the fact that however powerful they were, they couldn't escape death. Whatever their beliefs about the afterlife were, this life was going to end at some point. And so in this way, death is a great equalizer. It's a common thing we all have in common, just as we all have grief and loss in common. It's a thing that, yes, takes us apart. It strips us from our loved ones. It takes people we love away from us and ultimately takes us away from people we love. It also brings us together with everyone and everything that ever lived. So when the Stoics talk about how everything has two handles, that's the other way that you could think about death.

• 5:28Ryan Holiday?

  Not as something horrible and sad and awful and violent, but as something communitarian, something that unites us, something we all have in common, something transcendent and sacred then in that regard. And actually, this cemetery that I'm in right now is a plantation cemetery of workers from everywhere, from Spain and Puerto Rico, Korea, China, Japan, all over the world, people came here, different cultures, different beliefs, different socio-economic backgrounds, but all had one thing in common, obviously trying to provide for their family, trying to make a better life. Many of their descendants still live here in Hawaii. So death brings us together, but also life brings us together.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  In this cemetery that I'm in here in Maui, like, look, you see all these holes?

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  That's because chickens are roosting here in the graves, digging little nests and laying eggs. So both in the midst of life, we are in death. In the midst of death, there is life. But I guess also it's just this idea that none of this last we get chewed up and turned into worm food. Sure, but even our tombstones, like this cemetery is right next to a freeway, next to a business. I remember I once visited a cemetery in Brazil and another one in Milan. And they were taking these family tombs and just selling them to new families because they, they had to make room. They were running out of grave space. And it's just a reminder that again, the most powerful among us, the most important among us. Eventually, we just end up taking up space.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  We get in people's way and life goes on. And that's something that I think spending time in cemeteries reminds us.

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  It's crazy to think, I mean, yeah, there could be 200 or 300 or 30 people buried here. Or anywhere from 60 to 600. Over how long? Like, do you know when this came in? Well, I mean, the, you figure the mine life here was 1865 to 1930. So 70 years. There's a Samuel Johnson quote, like they discovered these old enormous like tombs from these kings in Scotland. And he said, like, in any case, they were people who, when they died, would not have guessed that they would have been forgotten so soon. The people who died here, the people who buried them, the people who came and visited. You would hope, right, that it would be in better repair than this. And yet this is the inevitable process.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  In Meditations, Marcus really says like Alexander the Great and his mule driver, they both die. They're both buried in the same ground and the same thing happens to both. Meaning they're both ultimately consumed by worms and become nothing. And their accomplishments are equalized. But yeah, the point is it's like, not just like your coffin and your tombstone and your fence. But then, you know, as we find with Indian burial grounds or all sorts, like eventually this too. No one even knows this is a cemetery. That wasn't there, that wasn't there that you wouldn't know it anymore already, 50 years later. Yeah, in Meditations, Marcus really says like, uh, those who long for posthumous fame, forget that they won't be around to enjoy it. Number one, but number two, he says, you also forget that the people in the future will also suck.

• 8:47Ryan Holiday?

  We stopped in the second of Tombstone's two cemeteries. It's famous one Boot Hill is actually like a tourist attraction. That's where some of the participants from the gunfight at the OK Corral are buried. And some other ones, it's actually not a super historically accurate cemetery. This is the city cemetery. It's down the street a little bit. And what I like to do is I like to come to cemeteries and I like to look for the oldest graves that I could find. I found one from the 1830s. I found one from the 1850s. Found a bunch of people born during the Civil War, a bunch of Union veterans of the Civil War, some Confederate veterans too. But I like to walk through the cemetery. It's always peaceful in a cemetery. It's always quiet and I just think about the lives that these people had. I think about how quickly they were forgotten.

• 9:29Ryan Holiday?

  I also think about what they managed to do in their brief lives. But I think really what a cemetery is for me is a reminder of how short and ephemeral life is. There's one little tombstone I saw someone was born in the 1860s and they drowned swimming in the San Pedro River. They went for a swim like I did yesterday and it was the last swim that they ever made. And so I think memento mori, why I do, I carry the memento mori coin in my pocket. The reason I do that is to remind myself not to take things for granted, not to be rushed, not to get upset about things that don't matter. This moment now is a gift, even if you're in a cramped RV, even if you're stuck in traffic, even if it's taking longer than you thought. So just relax, calm down. Life is wonderful. Life is beautiful. Even in a cemetery, it's peaceful and you can find something you can just soak in and

• 10:14Ryan Holiday?

  appreciate, feel that sort of somber bit of reflection and then go on about your life. And there's a reason that the Stoics talk about death over and over again because it really is an important philosophical exercise.

• 10:34Ryan Holiday?

  I'm here at this cemetery in New Orleans and I'm looking at some of the old tombs. This person behind me was born in 1870 and died in 1931. The other was born in 1872 and died in 1946. I don't just like to think about what they experienced, what they saw, but I go, this is a person with hopes and dreams. Maybe they had power, maybe they had fame, maybe they wrote books, maybe they were beautiful. Beautiful. Maybe they had an illustrious last name. And where are they now? They're dead. They're buried in this marble box and nobody knows and nobody cares. And in Meditations, Marcus really reminds himself, he says, "Who remembers the name of the emperor who came before him? Who remembers any of these people? They're gone and forgotten." And this is supposed to humble us and sober us up. It's supposed to be that we don't take life for granted,

• 11:17Ryan Holiday?

  but that we also don't prioritize and obsess over the wrong things. I'm reminded of this very powerful quote from Seneca. He says, "That at the end of your life, you better have something to show for all your years other than a number." Right? What do you actually have to show for it? Not what did you accomplish? Like, how much did you make? How powerful did you get? But did you actually live those years? I met a man in Austin. His name was Richard Overton. He was 112 years old when he died. That number would be meaningless if he didn't live a full and good life in that time. So to me, the idea of Memento Mori is not just, "Hey, you could die right now. Nothing matters." It's that you, because you could die, how do you actually show? How do you have proof of life for the years that you've been alive? Proof of life. To me, that's what Memento Mori is about. And it's why we can't forget it.

• 12:01Ryan Holiday?

  Pandemics have always been with us. And there are people buried in here from the Spanish Flu. There are people that are buried in here from yellow fever, from typhus, from malaria, all sorts of terrible diseases from wars, from tragedies, from violence. Death was ever-present in history and in the ancient world. Marcus really has lost, I think, six children before they reached adulthood. Death was ever-present. In our antiseptic, safe world today with the advances in modern medicine, where we push death away, where people die in special homes, where we don't have to think about it, let alone see it. It's really easy to deny death, to deny the reality of this thing that will happen to all of us. And so for the Stoics, the idea of Memento Mori was a constant reminder,

• 12:45Ryan Holiday?

  an active practice, that life is short, that we could go at any moment, that we're not in control, that we never will be in control, and that even if the averages are in your favor, that doesn't matter for you, the individual. Which is why you can't take life for granted, which is why you can't be entitled, which is why you can't waste time, which is why you can't take other people or relationships for granted. "You could leave life right now," Marcus really says. "Let that determine what you do and say and think."

• 13:16Ryan Holiday?

  So this is the Kesselis 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 Kesselis 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. There'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."

• 14:01Ryan Holiday?

  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." We 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."

• 14:46Ryan Holiday?

  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. I 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 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. Ready to return the gift. And that's a very stoic idea. All of it. It's only temporary. We only get it for a little bit.

• 15:30Ryan Holiday?

  There's a famous line in an Eschelus 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." Meaning 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. Like, we think about this idea like, what would I do if I found out I had cancer? If I got a terminal diagnosis? What if someone could predict my death? But you do have a terminal diagnosis.

• 16:15Ryan Holiday?

  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 through, 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. Steve 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,

• 16:59Ryan Holiday?

  following somebody else's trap." That's one of my favorite questions from Mark Schriles 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. Okay, 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.

• 17:44Ryan Holiday?

  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.