💀 Dying Every Day
Dying Every Day is a podcast by the Perennial Leader Project. Each episode turns a selected passage from Stoic philosophy into a guided meditation designed to help you (and me) learn how to live.
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The Stoic Art of Remembering Death
Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Day 136.
You don’t need a skull on your desk or a Latin motto in your bio to practice memento mori.
Montaigne, a sixteenth-century philosopher influenced by the Stoics, treats mortality as a human issue rather than a rare or dramatic event. He removes death from the category of “special occasions” and places it where it truly belongs: within everyday life.
1. Memento mori isn’t a mood. It’s a way to stop postponing your life.
Montaigne famously relies on the old saying that “to philosophize is to learn to die.” But his goal isn’t to make you morbid—it’s to make you less influenced by fear.
He argues (again and again) that much of what we call “living” is really just avoidance: constant busyness, constant delay, constant mental bargaining. We postpone the hard conversation. We postpone the creative work. We postpone courage. We postpone rest. We even postpone joy.
Remembering death is a way of interrupting the postponement.
This interruption occurs not with panic, but rather with clarity.
A practical way to remember mortality is this: you stop acting as if the important things can always be done later.
2. Premeditating death is premeditating freedom.
Montaigne has a line that deserves to be read slowly:
“The premeditation of death is the premeditation of freedom.”
This is the surprising pivot: memento mori is not meant to shrink you. It’s meant to unhook you.
Because when death remains unspoken, it influences you indirectly—through anxiety, people-pleasing, accumulation, and the frantic chase to stay distracted. But when death is faced openly, you find a strange kind of space inside yourself. You become less impressed by status. Less driven by urgency. Less controlled by the fear of being disliked. Less convinced that “someday” is a real place.
Montaigne sharpens the claim:
“He who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”
Slave to what? You might ask. To everyone else’s expectations. To every passing appetite. To every shiny distraction.
Mortality—when faced honestly—doesn’t make life bleak. It makes it yours.
3. Practice death lightly so you can live more fully.
This is where many people get stuck. They like the idea of memento mori, but they don’t want to live under a cloud.
Good. Don’t.
The point isn’t to stare at death. The point is to touch it briefly—then return to life with greater attention.
Here’s a good spot to introduce Seneca, as he offers a straightforward daily practice that truly resonates with everyday lives.
He writes:
“Let us postpone nothing.”
And in the same passage:
“Let us balance life’s account every day.”
That’s memento mori without theatrics or props. It’s a small evening pause that asks: Did I live today, or did I mainly delay? It turns mortality into a gentle review rather than a dark obsession.
A daily practice might look like this:
One sentence at night: If this were my last day, what would I be glad I did? What would I regret postponing?
One small repair: a text you’ve been avoiding, an apology, five minutes of real presence, a short page of reading, a plan for the one thing that matters.
Then stop. Go to sleep. Live tomorrow. Fate permitting.
Seneca’s main idea in On the Shortness of Life is that life isn’t necessarily short—it's our wastefulness that makes it feel that way. Memento mori is a way to stop being wasteful without becoming pessimistic or cynical.
Reflection Questions
What am I postponing that I wouldn’t postpone if I remembered—quietly—that life is finite?
Where would “the premeditation of freedom” make me braver—less anxious to impress, less afraid to disappoint?
What would it look like to “balance life’s account” tonight—one honest sentence, one small repair, then rest?
Memento mori is not a trend; it’s a timeless practice. It strives to dispel illusions and emphasize the essential aspects of life. Montaigne offers the freedom to face death (and life) without fear. Seneca provides the method of not postponing your life. Together, they point to something simple: you don’t need to live dramatically—you just need to live in the present.
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Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. Catch up on recent (and past) meditations in the archive!