I began having panic attacks so severe that they were physically crippling. My marriage struggled mightily-we nearly bottomed out. Add in isolation, existential angst from endless doomscrolling, a work environment that even across Zoom felt hostile, and an ever-increasing flow of Jameson whiskey used as an ill-advised salve, and things were looking rather bleak. I found Brazilian jiu jitsu in my mid-thirties, and the sense of community and the unmatched physical exhaustion wrought from grappling for your life was a saving grace. As a kid, my outlet had been sports as I got older, it became workouts so hard that they purified the soul. I had battled depression for as long as I could remember, dating back to age eleven. Then the pandemic hit, and I, like so many others, felt my mental health cratering. Stoicism urges us to own the immediate present, and in doing so, to achieve true freedom-and, perhaps, even happiness. Memento mori stuck in my head, but I didn’t give it much more thought for some time. And a full and clear-eyed account of your mortality on a daily basis chisels the excess clay away from the masterpiece your life can be. It translates to “remember you must die.” And despite the obvious denotation, it is actually a command to live fully, intentionally, and humbly. (Now that shit is morbid.) I googled the phrase and found that it is a main tenet of Stoicism. In his final music video before he overdosed in 2018 at age twenty-six, he lies inside a buried coffin and scratches “ Memento Mori” into its lid as a cigarette dangles from his lips. Stoicism first fluttered into my consciousness by chance, through the creations of another rapper, Mac Miller. If Zeno was DJ Kool Herc, rap’s founder, then Aurelius, who lived some 450 years later, was Biggie Smalls-the man who turned it into something sublime. ![]() Getty ImagesĪurelius is perhaps the most famous proponent of Stoicism, a Greco-Roman philosophy born from Zeno of Citium, who lived and taught in Athens circa 300 B.C. For it is better to die than to live badly."-Epictetus. "It is more necessary to heal the soul than the body. Lately, my son and I have been perfecting a harmonized medley of “The Owl and the Pussycat” and “Sugar” by The Horrible Crowes. When I remind myself of Aurelius’s words at night, every song tends to go on for just one more verse, and then one more verse again. So make the most of each single precious moment while you can. Instead it’s to remind them that there will be a last time that you do every single thing that you love-and if you are lucky, you won’t even know it. Borrowing from the philosopher Epictetus, he wrote in his book Meditations, “As you kiss your son good night, whisper to yourself, ‘He may be dead in the morning.’” This thought exercise is not meant to terrify any young parent. From a father’s inconceivable heartbreak came wisdom that would span millennia. (Yes, the same Marcus Aurelius that gets murdered by his son in Gladiator-the irony of which is not lost on me.) In a glut of bad luck that can only be characterized as obscene, Aurelius outlived nine-nine!-of his own children. It’s a practice I picked up from one of the Roman Empire’s fabled Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius. ![]() My nighttime ritual, I told my mother, is actually the furthest thing from morbid: It is an affirmation of life. Then I inhaled deeply, and started to explain.Ībout two and a half years ago, I became fascinated with the philosophy known as Stoicism, an ancient school of thought that urges us to own the immediate present, and in doing so, to achieve true freedom-and, perhaps, even happiness. I sat on the hearth and took a beat to digest the moment. “How could you possibly think like that?” She sat on the couch in my living room, the light from the fire roaring in the fireplace danced across her face as she looked at me with earnest concern. When I revealed this to my mother the other night, she said it made her sick to her stomach. Each night as I put my three-year-old son to bed we read our books, we sing our songs, and I tell myself that he may not survive to see the morning.
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