“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” – Marcus Aurelius

It is not a matter of If; It is a matter of when. We are all going to DIE, sooner or later. Contemplating your eventual mortality is one of the greatest grounding mechanisms I have found to reorder my priorities daily. In the face of death, we focus on the important things in life. Memento Mori is Latin for ‘remember that you have to DIE,’ it is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. Our time here is limited, life is short, but we can make the best use of our time here by constantly reminding ourselves of its inevitability.

 “The trouble is, you think you have time.” – Buddha

The average life expectancy in the developed world is around 80+ years which is around 30,000 days. If we sleep 8 hours a day, that means we would sleep 1/3rd of our life: 10,000 days, work and commuting would be around 3,500 days. Work and sleep alone would take close to half of our lifetime. The challenge is that we all think we still have time, we procrastinate, and we tell ourselves ‘Someday I’ll,” and the someday turns to never.