Eternal Thoughts, Memento Mori, & Contrasts
Wednesday Wisdoms for July 9, 2025
Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.
This month we’re exploring the theme of Mortality.
Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.
Eternal Thoughts
🤨 Quote
“None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal... Before long, darkness. And whoever buries you mourned in their turn.”
Marcus Aurelius
Source: Meditations 10.34
Observation 🧐
We hear it often: time is short, count your blessings, embrace the day.
But it’s incredibly difficult to hold the juxtaposition in our mind of embracing this moment—right here—while the world speeds up, and the idea that we will cease to exist within that world.
And yet, to truly experience the fruit of life, we have to try and hold these two views. One of the major problems, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, is that we accept the limits of our body, but not time.
We get that we slow down with age, but we don’t come to terms with the end. We feel youthful in our mind, but our body deceives us.
Life is a continuous balancing act: coming to terms with our own mortality while trying to say present.
“That the present is all we have to live in,” Marcus reminds himself. “Or to lose.”
🤔 Question
How do you accept the limits placed upon you?
Memento Mori
🤨 Quote
“…when at last some illness has reminded them of their mortality, how terrified do they die, as if they were not just passing out of life but being dragged out of it.”
Seneca
Source: On the Shortness of Life
Observation 🧐
It often takes a jarring act for us to remember we are mere mortals.
-The loss of a loved one.
-A serious health scare.
-A close call.
And it is in these moments we begin to take life more seriously—change our diets, begin to workout, visit the doctor more regularly.
The Stoics practiced memento mori to remind themselves. Remember you must die.
Generals would have it whispered in their ears as they entered battle, or returned victorious.
Because life is intoxicating, it is easy to become wrapped up in it. And in the process of doing so, we forget that we’re all mortals.
“Life will follow the path it began to take,” Seneca wrote, “and will neither reverse nor check its course.”
Remembering we’re mortal is how we learn to embrace the moment each and every day.
🤔 Question
When life is spinning faster and faster, what is one thing you do to ground yourself?
Beneath the paywall this week we explore the wisdom of Saul Bellow. Click below to support and get access.