Notations From the Social Grid (Weekly Edition): #RandomThoughts Courtesy the Team @TheDailyStoic

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It is a pleasure to present the following:  

We spend so much time on stuff that doesn’t matter, that we don’t even like. Maybe it’s a job or a commute to that job. Maybe it’s doom scrolling on our phone, answering emails. Maybe it’s arguing with a spouse, maybe it’s arguing with strangers on the internet.

You know the kind of stuff that you just kinda get sucked into. You hate it but you let it fill up so much of your life. Marcus Aurelius, frustrated with some obnoxious thing that was consuming his days, once asked himself. “You’re afraid of death,” he said, “because you won’t be able to do this anymore?”

That’s the thing about memento mori. It’s so clarifying. If you had unlimited time, maybe you wouldn’t mind spending two hours a day in traffic. Maybe you wouldn’t need to steer clear of the cesspool of Twitter or the endlessness of your inbox. If suddenly death was real to you--if you were given a few months or years to live--what would you immediately spend less time doing? What would the “this” that Marcus Aurelius referred to that you would cut out?

Well cut that thing out now, not later.

Because death is real. You do not have unlimited time.

None of us do. Which is why we have to get serious now.