Need to know
When I was an adolescent, I developed a profound fear of flying. But I also really loved to travel. To overcome this impasse, I developed a sort of spontaneous ritual. As soon as I got myself situated on the plane – carry-on stowed, seat belt buckled – I would close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then I would ask myself a question: ‘If I were to die today on this flight, what would I regret?’ Unwittingly, and knowing nothing of the tradition, I had developed my own memento mori.

A Woman Divided into Two, Representing Life and Death. Courtesy the Wellcome Collection, London
For millennia, and all over the world, people have actively cultivated a relationship with death as an important part of a life well lived. One way they have done so is through the use of memento mori (Latin for ‘remember you must die’). These are practices, objects or artworks created expressly to remind people of their death as a means of encouraging them to live the life they truly want before it’s too late. By forging a relationship with death, many people have found that they were, paradoxically, able to live fuller and more meaningful lives.
Steve Jobs, the man behind Apple computers and the iPhone, made use of memento mori in the crafting of a unique and impactful life. In a 2005 commencement speech – soon after he was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer – Jobs shared that, since his teens, he would look in the mirror every morning and ask himself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ If he found that the answer to that question was ‘No’ for too many days in a row, then he would make a change. He also told the young graduates:
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
What our ancestors knew so well – and Jobs and I both accidentally discovered – is that contemplating death is a powerful tool that, regardless of your beliefs about God or an afterlife, can transform your life. Its formidable lineage stretches back at least to Socrates, who asserted that the core of philosophy itself was a memento mori-like contemplation of one’s mortality. In ancient Rome, it was common to encounter a skeleton mosaic on a tavern floor as an exhortation to ‘seize the day’ (carpe diem); in other words, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you might be dead. Christians used memento mori as a reminder to resist earthly temptations and to be ready to meet (and be judged by) their maker. Memento mori were also used by some Buddhists, who would visit charnel grounds and meditate on decomposing corpses as a means of overcoming fear of death. Even today, one sometimes finds a human skeleton in a Buddhist meditation space.
Carl Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology and onetime protégé of Sigmund Freud, believed that, even for nonreligious people, the contemplation of death is deeply important. He asserted that coming to terms with mortality is one of the most important tasks of life from middle age on, and that developing one’s own personal understanding of it is essential to psychological wellbeing.
On a personal level, I have found that keeping reminders of mortality close at hand provides me with the clarity to see what truly matters to me, and the courage necessary to live a life aligned with my values. Because I have, for decades, been asking myself what I would regret if I were to die – and because I made changes in accord with those answers – I live a rich and fulfilling life that I appreciate every day. Contemplating death has not given me financial security or a generous retirement account, but it has allowed me to manifest a life – one filled with travel, learning, beauty, relationships and artistic expression – that will, I hope, leave me with few deathbed regrets and allow me to die with a sense of peace.

Memento Mori, ‘To this Favour’ (1879) by William Michael Harnett. Courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art
In 2007, I started a project called Morbid Anatomy. Devoted to the places where art, death and culture intersect, it began as a blog and has since evolved to include exhibitions, films, books, a research library and various educational programmes. Morbid Anatomy is also a community, a place for people around the world who wish to talk about, or develop a positive relationship with, death and mortality. At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, I started to teach an online class for Morbid Anatomy called ‘Make Your Own Memento Mori’. I wanted to use that particular historical moment – one in which death was demanding our attention in a way it had not in decades – as an invitation to develop a relationship with our mortality. The class introduced students to a rich variety of ways in which other eras and cultures made sense of, imagined and even celebrated death. They also made their own memento mori, an object intended to remind them of death so as to make the best use of their time on earth.
My new book Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life (2024) draws from and expands on my experience teaching this class. It also offers dozens of practical exercises designed to help any of us forge a personal relationship with death, reduce our fear of it and find clarity on what, for us, makes a life well lived.
Below I will share a few of these activities with you, along with their animating principles. Just grab a pen and paper – or speak into the notes app on your phone – and respond to the questions and prompts that follow.