Memento Mori
It’s 31st of October, the day prior to my birthday, the day of the dead, halloween. I’m lacking sleep and I haven’t stopped at all in the past weeks but it would be a shame not to wake up early and go for a run to cherish the rare blue sky that tints London today.
I’m not setting a specific mileage goal or aiming for a pace faster than 4.40, I just want to keep it simple and go. I chose not to take the usual routes and all of a sudden I find myself running around the tombstones of Camberwell new cemetery. Surrounded by death, I never felt more alive.
I observe all of the graves and I realise that one day, this body that now is moving fast along the road will be down there, rotten in the ground, eaten by the worms, forgotten, a name and a date set on stone. Somehow it doesn’t feel traumatising or daunting at all, but natural. I think about death, I think about mortality a lot, and sometimes I wonder if the fact of being born the day of the dead has something to do with it.
I think about mortality when I’m angry, when I’m overwhelmed, when I’m lonely, when I’m sad. I think about it to remind myself not that ‘nothing matters’, but to balance out the situation and question myself, what does it really matter?
And what matters is usually so simple and small that we tend to overcomplicate our lives picturing future scenarios and getting anxious about things that are gone or will never happen in real life.
And what it matters it’s probably all you already have, and it’s here, it’s now, it may just be a day with a clear sky, someone’s smile or a silly accident that made you laugh. And it may come unpredictable and unplanned, and it may be so subtle you won’t even notice at all.
So whenever I feel lost or am seeking meaning in the midst of darkness, I pictured the image of my skull, I tell to myself as the ancient stoics ‘memento mori’ so I can get back to the present moment and remind to myself that, in this very limited time we have, I want to be limitless, spread my view to the wide open, express gratitude for every single second, forgive to the ones who once hurt me, apologise to the ones I once hurt, keep moving like the wind, restless, silent, ethereal, eternal.
Thanks for reading!
Today my grandma turns 92, even though she has spent all her life taking care of others, I always remember her telling me about her running like a goat through the rocks when she was a child, I guess that’s where all of this comes from…and although I can’t be at home with her to celebrate her life, I can feel her close.
Yours,
H.