Ever have a brush with death?
I came close during a flash flood in 2015, and surviving it left me deliriously happy and grateful…for about two weeks.
My elation faded quickly, and I was soon back to my status quo moderate okness. In the months that followed I decided I wanted that gratitude, joy, and perspective back, and I set off to get it.
I began consistently reframing my life in terms of death and the transience of all things — a practice known as memento mori — which leads to happiness and a better ability to cope with the problems and annoyances of life.
Pretty soon I was almost as delighted by simple pleasures as I’d been after my near brush with death. And this way was far more sustainable.
In this article I’m going to discuss three ways you can use death to make your life better, as well as some modern science showing that thinking about death can have a therapeutic effect.
If you prefer to watch me talk about this rather than read, I’ve posted a youtube video below.
Memento Mori:
The Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
He was conducting a spiritual exercise in his journal, part of a millennia-long tradition stretching from Europe to Asia that acknowledges that our inevitable death can reframe our life and help bring it meaning and poignancy.
But today, death has been shushed, sanitized, and medicalized, and most people keep thoughts of death at arms-length, afraid of the anxiety they’ll cause.
This is a mistake, and modern research shows that exploring our own demise can be psychologically grounding, and help us improve ourselves.
We might imagine that thinking about death will produce anxiety or make us feel sad. But this study compared the blog posts of those dying of cancer or ALS with those asked to imagine they were dying of those conditions. Those actually dying had more positive and fewer negative things to say about the experience than those asked to pretend, which should make us question our assumptions about dying.
But what’s more interesting is that those imagining they were dying told the researchers that the experience wasn’t depressing or anxiety-inducting, but therapeutic!
After living through a California earthquake that had killed several dozen people, a number of survivors of the earthquake, who reflected on their own brush with death, reported shifts away from extrinsic goals like earning money, acquiring possessions, and having people like them, and towards intrinsic ones like putting effort into relationships with family members and seeking to accomplish what they personally found meaningful.
And thinking about our mortality may help us perform better. Firefighters risk their lives daily, and frequently see people dying in fires and accidents. Some research has found that this stress leads to degraded job performance. But when asked to reflect on death logically and deeply, firefighters become more safety conscious, conscious of the prosocial aspect of their career, and concerned with the welfare of others. They also report more life satisfaction.
Before exploring three specific ways thinking about death can improve our lives, I want to tell you about my own near-death experience in October of 2015.
How I Almost Died.
I was in a deep sleep around 7:30 a.m. when the back wall of the guesthouse I was staying collapsed over my bed. I pushed it off me and threw my legs to the ground, only to splash down into rapidly-rising calf-deep water. A couple minutes later I was treading water, and soon after I was eyeing the rapidly-dwindling pocket of air between the flood line and the ceiling with growing concern.
The stretch of yard between my guesthouse and the main house had become a raging torrent filled with tree trunks hurling by.
I thought that either the rest of the shoddily-made building was going to collapse on me, I’d stay inside and drown, or I’d go outside and drown or get pulverized. None of my options looked good.
But I didn’t die. The water stopped rising with just enough of an air pocket for me to breath, the guest house didn’t totally collapse, and a few hours later I was pulled from the cold water by firefighters in a pontoon boat.
After the flash flood, everything felt surreal. I was deliriously grateful for the little things in my life. A comfortable warm bed. My friends. Taking a walk. All things that would have been snatched away from me had things gone a little differently. I was beginning to rethink several aspects of my life.
But a few weeks later I was back to normal, my gratitude vanished and my perspective shift gone. Life was flat again.
Yet I retained enough awareness to know that there was something wrong with that. That I didn’t need to live as I had before. Since my late teen years I’d studied Stoic philosophy, was familiar with their exploration of death, and had experimented enough with it to know that it could cause perspective shifts.
And so I committed to spending a few minutes each day with the idea that I was going to die and that everything and everyone I loved was going to fade away. Within a few days of carrying this new frame around with me, much of the broadened perspective and gratitude came rushing back.
So let’s talk about three specific applications:
Death Lets Us Love Challenging People
Ever here the Ram Dass quote, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents,”?
Rarely have truer words been spoken. Whether it’s family or someone else, there are probably people in your life who always get under your skin. Try as you might to stay calm, you get irritated and argue with them.
If you don’t cut them out of your life completely, it probably means you also love them and value them on some level, so it’s worth asking if this is really how you want your last interaction with them to be.
Because it may well be your last interaction.
Even if you don’t die, family and friends will, often before you expect them to. And those that live still decline, change, and live in different circumstances. One day you’ll have your last visit with your parents in the house you grew up in. You’ll see your childhood best friend for the last time. You’ll have a last dinner with your siblings, and you never know when it will be.
One secret I’ve learned for dealing with people I love who get under my skin that immediately shifts me out of irritation is reminding myself about the finite nature of the relationship. I recall all the good things this person has done for me, the memories we’ve had, how much they’ve loved me, and I’m immediately filled with gratitude. I’m far more inclined to forgive their faults and irritating quirks when I do this. I can’t tell you how beneficial this has been for me, and how much calmer I am with these people.
If I don’t want my last encounter with this person to be filled with bickering and irritation, I’d better hold my tongue unless it’s really important. I accept their quirks with a smile, and our time together is surprisingly peaceful.
My father died young, before I was ready, and I often miss him. I wish I hadn’t foolishled assumed that he’d be around for many years, as my grandfather had been for him. I spent plenty of time with my dad, but wasn’t as present as I could be because I always thought there would be time for another visit. Until there wasn’t. So now I do my best to cherish the valuable relationships I have by constantly remembering that they might end soon — maybe today.
Death Makes Us Grateful and Happy
Gratitude is one of those platitudes we always hear about. The research on its psychological and health benefits is clear. Yet it’s hard to practice.
Whether it’s a home (shabby as it is), a car (unsexy as it is), or a romantic partner who seems to have lost their sheen, we eventually take what we have for granted.
For years I’ve tried to be more grateful, but I couldn’t muster much emotion when I made gratitude lists until I started thinking about Memento Mori and the inevitable loss, decay, and death that rules life.
The thought of life on the streets without your home, or the travails of transportation without your beat-up car, or just how much a loved one brings to your life which you’d be sad to lose tends to make the heart swell with gratitude.
Often, it’s the prospect of losing something that makes you realize how truly great it is, and how lucky we are to have it. So we need to simulate that loss in our mind to really feel it.
Doing this exercise has often caused me to get up and immediately express gratitude toward someone, or let them know how much I care, because it suddenly occurs to me how negligent I’d been. We blithely go through life taking our blessings for granted, and the specter of loss makes us see how foolish we’ve been, and it feels good!
Death Makes For Better Decisions
“You live as if you were destined to live forever,” the philosopher Seneca said. “No thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”
Death may be the best thing in life. If we didn’t have it, we might want to invent it to keep our heads on straight.
Let death jolt you out of your reverie and help you stop living as if you’ll never die.
We’re often asked to imagine how the knowledge that we’d die tomorrow would affect our decisions. But it’s probably better to ask ourselves how we might live differently if we were going to die in five years.
You’d still need to bring in money to pay the bills, so you can’t go totally off the rails. But five years is long enough to write a book, to invent a tool to help humanity, to popularize a new social or political movement, or to revive relationships with someone you’re estranged from.
And what about what you won’t do for those five years? Would you take a prestigious job promotion if it meant spending a lot less time with your family? Would you get drunk or do drugs on the weekends, knowing that you don’t have too many left? How many times will you visit your family, or call distant friends?
Check In With Death Every Day
As I found out, the gratitude and greater perspective that comes with a brush from death fades quickly. And a philosophical exploration of memento mori isn’t a one-time fix. It only has a lasting impact if you make an awareness of death a constant part of your life.
You can do this in several ways. Often, just sitting down in a quiet place without distractions and thinking about losing the things and people you love is enough. Journaling often feels more concrete. When you’re dealing with a person you love who is also getting under your skin, often just reminding yourself that this might be the last time you see them can cause a huge shift in perspective.
Some people like to put memento mori calendars on their walls or put memento mori tattoos on their arms as reminders. Whatever your approach, make sure you check in with death regularly.
As Marcus Aurelius said, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”