Memento Mori
Two-thirds of my life are over. Let's face the harsh truth in one diagram with the help of this little web-app. Three book recommendations included.
In his fantastic book “The Comfort Crisis” Michael Easter argues that in the western world we nowadays feel uncomfortable thinking about death and dislike being reminded of our own mortality.
That has not always been the case. The Stoics, for instance, practiced “memento mori”, which translates to “remember that you will die.”1 Although it seems counterintuitive, Michael Easter explains compellingly that dealing with the transience of all life and our own mortality makes us happier
As I lately rediscovered my passion for programming and was experimenting with Ruby on Rails (which, of course, is totally overpowered for this little exercise), that revelation in Micheal Easters book plus the inspiration from Oliver Burkeman’s book “4000 Weeks” gave me the perfect excuse to chisel some code in Neovim (Lazyvim) with my bare fingers (no AI involved) for the fun of it.
The harsh reality of my life you see above. Now it’s your turn.
Enter your birthday and see where you are with respect to the roughly 4.000 weeks that have been allotted to you.
A fantastic book on Stoic philosophy is “How to think like a Roman Emperor” by Donald J. Robertson.
Somewhere along in the journey we start thinking about the legacy we will leave, not in terms of material things but what we have have done to influence and improve those that will be here after we are gone. That becomes more pronounced as time marches on. That coupled with a "never quit learning mindset" is powerful.