Hello! Seiiti Arata. If you are suffering because you think your life is hard, remember that at least life is short. And the older you get, life seems to go by faster. Even if you are young and believe that you still have your whole life ahead of you, you have to remember that you can die at any moment from an accident or a new virus that appeared on the other side of the world.
Being clear about this dimension of time is essential. We keep complaining about not having time for anything. But we also waste our time on low-value activities.
This creates curious situations. For example, when we have a lot of available time to do a task, we end up procrastinating, leaving it for later. When we have a task that needs to be done in a short time or there will be a serious consequence, we start moving and do what needs to be done. The problem is that this idea that we have a lot of time is just an illusion.
We want to use our time well to reach the day of death with few regrets.
When you think about death, you remember that there is a limited amount of time to be able to do what you want.
You will die. It could be fifty minutes or fifty years from now. And the people you love will also die sooner or later.
Having this awareness that we can cease to exist at any time can help us make better choices about what we think, say and do. Likewise, gaining awareness that the people we love are going to die ends up helping us to have a better relationship with them.
Logically you will miss them when they die. But the simple fact that today you remember the possibility of death will help you to be less shocked when that happens.
Excessive attachment to certain people can make it difficult for you to cope with the loss. When you are aware of the possibility of death, you approach the truth. And it helps you to let go of the idea of wanting permanence.
To wish that everything always remains the same is a losing battle. Our reality is marked by impermanence. I am not saying that you will deal coldly with the death of a loved one or that you will not mourn. I’m saying that you can be better prepared for the inevitable. And even the person on a deathbed will have greater peace of mind when he realizes that you are prepared.
What would you do if you only had today left?
If you were sure you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today? Would you choose to spend your last hours of existence having fun, doing what you never had the courage to do … or would you seek to live with virtue? Or would you do everything the same, have your breakfast, go to work, come home, take a shower and enjoy your dinner normally with your family? If you die tomorrow, will you be at ease knowing that everything is in order in your life? For many, to live with character is to live every day as if it were the last day.
One thing is certain. You would hardly waste the last hours of your life browsing aimlessly on social media, watching television or practicing any other low-value activity.
But is death something that should make us afraid, sad? Or is it because of the wrong ideas we have about death? We are not troubled by things, but by the idea we have of things. Death itself is not scary. What is scary is the kind of opinion we have about death.
When we realize that death is part of life, we get a new outlook on life while it lasts and we have greater gratitude. And gratitude is also knowing how to use the life we have well instead of wasting it.
Remember that you will die someday.
Realize how amazing it is that you are alive now. Don’t take life for granted. Do not think that you are immortal. Forgetting your mortality is a classic problem that has been studied since ancient Rome. That is why the idea of memento mori comes up, of remembering death, that death will come to us all at some point.
When you remember that you are going to die one day, you realize that it makes no sense to waste precious moments of life complaining, fighting over nonsense, gossiping about the lives of others, looking at pictures of other people on social networks. When you realize you are mortal, you can make better choices with the limited time you have.
We are not saying that death is negative. Death is a fact, just like the sun, the water, the cold, the heat. It’s part of life.
You don’t have to be afraid of death. As long as you are alive, and you are alive now, death does not exist for you. And when your death comes, you will no longer exist.
You don’t have to worry about death or obsess over death. Just be aware that you will die someday. Every moment you remember that this is a passing life and that you are mortal, you are freed from the illusion of immortality and you’re able to make better choices with greater awareness. So you gain more clarity about the value of life.
A poorly lived life is one of the worst kinds of death.
The uncertainty about when we are going to die is one of life’s great challenges. On the one hand, we have to plan our lives and set goals considering that we have a future to be lived. On the other hand, we have to take advantage of the present because there is a possibility of dying at any moment.
We need to eat so we are healthy for a long time, while we need to take advantage of certain moments in life to get pleasure from the type of food we want. We need to save for the future and at the same time we need to use money to satisfy our desires in the present. We need to seize the moment while we need to work to pay future bills.
In short, we need to live life well now and to the end. You should not regret that life has an end. It is precisely the end of life that increases the value of life.
It is better to get a natural flower than an artificial flower. The natural flower has an end. The beauty of life is that it ends. This adds to the challenge of making the best use of our lives.
We must not live life in fear of death. Why be afraid of what is inevitable? Rationally, it makes no sense to be afraid of what will happen regardless of my choice.
But it seems that our society does not accept death and aging. We want more and more to prolong the youth and so we forget that we are aging and dying. Old age is not a defect or something to escape. It is a normal phase of our life, of our existence.
It is not sad to grow old. The sad thing is that you want to hide your age. The sad thing is the only way to not grow old: to die young.
When we talk about death, the person who leaves is less important. It matters more the person who stays.
We do not talk about death, we talk about “passing away”, we talk about the person who is “gone”. Death is a taboo. The mere fact that I mention the word death several times here and put the word “die” in the title and description puts me at risk of YouTube punishing me, like they once punished me in the past.
If you look at the channel’s history, you will find a video about memento mori, to remember that one day we will die. And the YouTube algorithm initially even sent me a notification telling me that I was talking about an unpleasant topic. Death is taboo. And that harms us because it ends up making it difficult for us to mature, to have clarity.
We have to see fear in a positive way. Fear shows us where it is important to pay attention. The problem is when the fear turns into a phobia.
Physical death is the end of our projects. And what is behind the fear of death is often the poor accomplishment of our projects. A person who is well with himself knows that he is not wasting his time and is generally not afraid of death. What we need to be afraid of is living badly.
Whenever I’m at a funeral, I tend to experience death from someone else’s perspective. I think about the suffering that was caused by the absence. I think about the inconvenience caused by unfinished projects or assumed obligations.
When you learn to deal with death while you are still alive, you become more alive.
This reflection is useful when you find yourself being too strict with your failures. Why were you not successful? Why didn’t you get richer? Remember that in a few years or days you will die and any success you achieve is temporary.
You can do an exercise to remember all the deceased individuals that you admire. They can be great heroes, scientists, celebrities, actors, or people you admire for their intelligence, beauty, inventiveness, wealth. You will see that they are all dead and buried.
This exercise increases your awareness of death and shows that it does not make sense to be overly celebrating achievements or even to be overly punishing yourself because of failures. You cannot take your achievements or defeats too seriously. When you are no longer alive, it will not make much of a difference. This exercise is not meant to be morbid, to put you down. But when you reflect on death, decomposition and impermanence, you can free yourself from attachment to the body, from attachment to the ego.
When you look at death head-on, fear fades. There are even people who contemplate dead bodies in different stages of putrefaction and apply this perception to the body itself, which is of the same nature and will also go through the same inevitable process.
This kind of attitude is sure to cause astonishment, horror and even hatred in many people. Imagine that I suggest you search the Internet for photos and videos of decomposing bodies and keep looking. You may think it is a crazy practice. And this has to do with a phenomenon in modern society that basically banned death.
Death is more hidden than ever.
Before, death was an event. You saw funerals, you even saw executions. Deaths were announced, the newspaper had the mortuary, some cars with loudspeakers still announce the deaths of people in small rural communities.
All of this is increasingly rare nowadays. Perhaps there are people here over the age of thirty who have never seen a dead person, who have never been to a funeral.
Today our society makes an effort to hide death from our eyes. The slaughter of animals is done far and if you want to buy a chicken breast, you go to the supermarket and get a plastic package with the clean fillet and everything sterilized. People’s death no longer happens at home with their family, it is in the hospital, with those white lights, blue blankets, plastic curtains.
Instead of accepting death as a natural process, we think that medicine is failing to save people. It seems that everything needs a cure. Or if the cure does not yet exist, it is soon to be invented. The positive thought that everything is going to end up also gives us false hopes when it makes it difficult for us to see reality.
The cult of the body, of life, of youth can harm us. When we become attached to the use of aesthetic treatments to disguise old age, use image retouching to hide the truth.
To overly celebrate eternal youth in social media photos and when old age inevitably arrives, the elderly are forgotten, abandoned, left out. The elderly person withdraws, because he is ashamed to exist and to be old, for fear of being inconvenient, ugly, disgusting, not listening to anything, not understanding anything, not being able to do anything. It is not surprising that memento mori does not have a place in such a society.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can be clear about the unpredictability of death. You can accept your aging process. You can at the same time enjoy life now without neglecting the future. All you need to do is accept that, at any moment, you are going to die.
Death is inevitable. And the only thing you don’t want is to reach your final moments thinking about everything that could have been but wasn’t.
So don’t waste any more time. Put your big dreams on paper, set your goals and act today to live life the way you’ve always wanted to.
For those of you who need a step by step, guided guidance on how to do this, I invite you to take a look at the Planning Your Life course by watching a special class on how to identify your great personal values right now. To watch the class, just click the link here.