You have heard me voice my favorite Stoic meme on many occasions: “Memento Mori”. Remember you will die. Death has such negative connotations for many because we tend to fear it. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to feel pain. We don’t want to deteriorate in a hospital bed until our brain and organs die. Well, guess what? We have no control over it. We will die. Get over it. Now, once we resign ourselves to the inevitable, why fear it? It is not rational to be afraid of something over which we have no control. The best response is to remind our feeble brains, every day, that we will die. There is no avoiding it. So, if it happens today, how do I want to live today? Well, I want to play with my computers and gadgets, spend time with my wife and friends, eat mass quantities of the food I love, spend some time in complete relaxation, laugh a lot, cry some, help someone else who is having trouble letting go of a bad memory, and other things that might tickle my fancy. What choice do we have? So, in the end, I don’t fear death. But, I am going to have a hell of a time until it comes.
