Memento Mori-Memento Vivere

Live your life, remember and value the good moments and the good people around you. For, nothing is permanent.

For some of us, the mere thought of death and loss causes panic and fear, the fear of losing our most precious treasures and loved ones. The fear of loss can cause us more pain than we need to endure. We sometimes link our happiness and the peace of our minds to the people we love and care for; or objects and events. If and when we lose one of these precious treasures, we are devastated.

The fear of losing something or someone in the future prevents us from enjoying the actual time we spend with them now. Everything we live is an experience, and it will all come to an end one way or the other. To fear an inevitable end only increases our worries for things that are outside of our control, and this mentality does not allow us to be in the moment.

Just like the loss of something or someone we care for, we also face another inevitable truth; our mortality. It is not a question of if, but a question of when it will happen. We all have a limited time on this planet, and how we chose to live it is up to us.

By remembering that any moment can be our last, we can enjoy every single precious moment, because that is what they are, precious.

There is a saying that “we can understand the true value of what we have, only once we lose them” This does not have to be the case if you understand and accept this from the very beginning. Knowing the possibility (and a most probable one) of an end to anything and everything we experience will make us value them even more.

Although we like to think we have an immense amount of control over our lives and the outcomes; the truth is, we have such little control over the majority of what is going on in our lives that it is pretty scary to admit for most. Understanding and accepting what is in our power and what is not is important. Do not feed the fear of controlling outcomes that are not in your control. Accepting the fact and living your life to its fullest extent is a much better approach. This way, the ones you care for become much more precious, and the time you spend with them becomes much more valuable.

“Memento Mori” — Remember death, but also “Memento Vivere” — Remember to live!