Memento Mori is a Latin phrase that roughly translates to, “Remember you will die.”
What a beautiful, little phrase that puts life in perspective.
Few things force a person to deliberately analyze their life better than the knowledge that our existence is fleeting. Yet it can be difficult to constantly remember that fact and take the steps necessary to live as well as you can. Or is it?
Enter the Memento Mori Chart.
The concept was created by a phenomenal mentor, Craig Weller, and is stunningly simple: on a piece of paper, create a table with a height of eighty cells and a width of fifty-two cells. On the top-left corner of the chart, write your birthdate; on the bottom-right corner of the chart, write your birthdate eighty years later. Every cell represents one week – so for every week that passes, fill out one cell.
I’ve been doing this since February 2011, and it’s been an incredible experiment. Every time I fill out a cell, I reflect on the past week: did I accomplish what I wanted to or did I fail? Did I bring myself closer to my goals or farther from them? Was I happy? And would I be happy if I did it over-and-over (and over) again?
Change Is Hard
I’m not going to lie: self-analysis is difficult and – sometimes – extremely painful. “Self-awareness is a pain in the ass when there are so many entertaining reality shows on cable, ” Craig notes. Sometimes you have to admit mistakes – maybe the lifestyle you cling onto is actually destructive. Or maybe, your life is right on track, and you gaze ahead upon the blank, white spaces with a burning joy and passion.
Last week, I filled out the twenty-third row of my chart. And I reminisced on the completed row and recalled so many powerful events: starting my homestay in Taipei, moving to Australia, bulking to 165lbs, journeying to Hunter Valley (where I took the picture at the top), and returning to America to begin a career as a personal trainer.
Socrates once said,
The unexamined life is not worth living.
How true.
So go and get started. Once you create or find your template, fill it out up to the past week. Keep it somewhere that can be easily accessed, and tell me if it doesn’t change your life.
As an Italian poet once said,
We live in a flash of light; evening comes, and it is night forever.
Memento mori.
[…] but I’ll save that for another article). Instead, I focused on other things: Constant self-improvement. Achieving goals. True friends. (And later) Awareness. Attractiveness was just a […]