We spend so much of our lives preparing for tomorrow that we sometimes forget to appreciate the life we’re living today.
There are things in life we keep telling ourselves we’ll get around to. A trip we’ve wanted to take, a relationship that needs attention, a conversation we’ve been avoiding, or simply spending more time doing something we enjoy. We don’t necessarily decide these things aren’t important, but we convince ourselves there will be a better time for them. There’s always another responsibility, another project, or something that needs to get done before we can give those things our attention.
I’ve caught myself doing this more than I’d like to admit. The reasoning usually makes sense at the time. Once things settle down, once I finish what I’m working on, or once I have a little more freedom, I’ll make time for it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to recognize something uncomfortable about that way of thinking. Life doesn’t necessarily settle down, and the future we’re preparing for has a way of becoming another version of the present, filled with its own responsibilities and distractions.
We can spend so much time preparing for the life we want that we overlook the life we’re already living.
Memento Mori: Remembering That Our Time Is Limited
One of the Stoic practices I’ve come to appreciate most is memento mori, the reminder that we will die. At first, that might sound like a rather depressing way to approach life, especially when most of us would rather avoid thinking about our mortality. But I’ve never understood the practice as an invitation to dwell on death. I see it as a reminder to pay closer attention to life and to recognize that the time available to us isn’t something we should take for granted.
In On the Shortness of Life, Seneca challenges the way people allow their time to be consumed by obligations, distractions, and pursuits that may not deserve as much of their lives as they receive. His concern wasn’t simply that life is short, but that we often fail to recognize how much of it we’re giving away. I think about that when I consider how easily an entire day can disappear while we’re moving from one responsibility to another, answering messages, solving problems, and keeping ourselves occupied. By the end of the day, we may have accomplished quite a bit without ever considering whether we gave our attention to the things that mattered most.
There’s nothing wrong with working hard, pursuing goals, or having responsibilities. Those are important parts of life, and I don’t believe living intentionally means abandoning them. But there’s a difference between spending our time deliberately and allowing whatever demands our attention to determine how we spend it. That’s what makes recognizing the value of our time so important. We can’t create more of it, and we don’t know how much we have left, yet we often make decisions as though there’s an unlimited supply waiting somewhere in the future.
The Life We Keep Postponing
I think one of the easiest traps to fall into is believing that life will become more enjoyable once we’ve accomplished a particular goal. We’ll travel more when we’re financially comfortable, spend more time with family when work slows down, or pursue an interest when we have fewer responsibilities. Sometimes waiting is necessary because we have financial realities, commitments, and obligations that deserve to be honored. But I wonder how often we use those responsibilities as a reason to postpone things that could already be part of our lives.
There’s always another goal to pursue, another improvement to make, and another reason to keep pushing forward. If we’re not careful, we can spend years preparing for a life that we continually move further into the future. I’ve come to believe that one of the more important questions we can ask ourselves isn’t simply what we want to accomplish, but what we’re sacrificing along the way. Are we giving our best attention to work while the people closest to us receive whatever energy remains? Are we postponing experiences because we’re waiting for circumstances to be perfect? Are we so focused on becoming successful that we’re overlooking the parts of life that make success meaningful?
These aren’t always easy questions to answer, especially when the things competing for our time are genuinely important. I’ve had periods when work required more of my attention, and I understand that responsibilities don’t always allow us to divide our time exactly as we’d like. But remembering that our time is limited can help us recognize when our priorities and our actions have started moving in different directions. It gives us an opportunity to reconsider those choices before another year passes and we’re still telling ourselves we’ll get around to the same things.
Some Conversations Can’t Wait Forever
Time also changes the way I think about relationships. Most of us have experienced a disagreement that went unresolved longer than it should have. Maybe we were frustrated, didn’t know what to say, or simply hoped the situation would improve on its own. Sometimes we tell ourselves we’ll reach out when we’re ready, when emotions settle, or when the other person makes the first move. What we don’t always consider is that we’re assuming the opportunity will still be there when we finally decide to take it.
I’ve learned through leadership that difficult conversations rarely become easier simply because we avoid them, and I think the same is true in our personal lives. An apology we should have offered, appreciation we never expressed, or a relationship we intended to repair can remain unfinished because we assume there will always be another chance. The longer we wait, the easier it becomes to convince ourselves that waiting a little longer won’t make much difference.
That doesn’t mean every relationship can or should be repaired. Some situations require distance, and some people may not be willing to reconnect. Stoicism reminds us that we don’t control how others respond or whether our efforts lead to the outcome we hope for, but we do have responsibility for our own actions. We can acknowledge where we were wrong, express appreciation while someone can still hear it, or make an effort to spend time with someone who matters to us. Sometimes the most meaningful use of our time isn’t accomplishing something new, but taking care of something we’ve allowed to remain unfinished.
Not Every Moment Needs to Be Productive
There’s another side to this that I think deserves attention, especially for those of us who spend much of our lives focused on improvement and achievement. When we recognize that our time is limited, it’s tempting to conclude that we need to make every minute count. We start looking for ways to be more productive, accomplish more, and eliminate anything that doesn’t appear to move us forward. But I don’t believe that’s what memento mori is asking of us, and I think we can miss the point entirely if remembering our mortality becomes another reason to put more pressure on ourselves.
Some of the most valuable parts of life have nothing to do with productivity. Spending an afternoon with family, sitting outside without anything particular to accomplish, enjoying a conversation with a friend, or taking time to appreciate something beautiful doesn’t need to produce a measurable result. I’ve spent enough of my career thinking about performance, improvement, and efficiency to recognize how easily that mindset can follow us into the rest of our lives. We become so accustomed to measuring progress that we sometimes struggle to enjoy experiences simply for what they are.
I don’t think life is something we need to optimize from beginning to end. There’s value in being present without trying to accomplish something, just as there’s value in rest, laughter, relationships, and experiences that won’t necessarily make us more successful tomorrow. Living intentionally should include making room for those moments rather than feeling guilty because we aren’t doing something productive. Sometimes using our time well means allowing ourselves to enjoy it without expecting anything in return.
Living Intentionally Begins With Today
One of the things I appreciate about Stoicism is that it continually brings us back to what we can influence through our choices and actions. We can’t control how much time we have left, guarantee that our plans will unfold the way we expect, or recover opportunities we’ve already allowed to pass. But we can decide how we approach the time in front of us, and I think that’s where remembering our mortality becomes something more than an interesting philosophical idea.
Seneca’s reflections on time remind me that awareness alone isn’t enough. We can agree that life is short, recognize that relationships matter, and understand the importance of being present without changing anything about how we live. The difficult part is allowing those realizations to influence our decisions, especially when doing so means changing familiar habits or making room for something that doesn’t seem as urgent as everything else demanding our attention.
Maybe that means making time for a conversation we’ve been postponing, taking the trip we’ve talked about for years instead of waiting for everything to be perfect, or recognizing that a problem consuming so much of our attention today won’t matter nearly as much as we think it will a year from now. None of those decisions requires us to completely change our lives, but they do require us to consider whether the way we’re spending our time reflects what we say is important.
I also believe there’s value in taking a few moments at the end of the day to consider how we’ve spent our time. Not to criticize ourselves for everything we didn’t accomplish, but to reflect on whether our choices reflected our priorities. A simple Stoic evening reflection can help us recognize those gaps while there’s still an opportunity to do something differently. And I think it’s just as important to notice what went well, because the conversations we enjoyed, the people who made us laugh, and the ordinary moments we might otherwise overlook deserve our attention, too.
Don’t Wait to Start Living
I don’t think remembering our mortality should make life feel darker. If anything, I believe it should help us see more clearly what makes life worth living. There will always be responsibilities to manage, goals to pursue, and things that need our attention. We don’t have to abandon ambition or stop preparing for the future, but we should be careful not to sacrifice the life we have today for a future we’re never guaranteed.
The people we care about won’t always be here, and neither will we. The opportunities available to us today may look very different a few years from now, and some of the ordinary moments we barely notice will eventually become memories we wish we could experience again. I don’t see that as a reason to live with fear or regret, but as a reminder to appreciate what we have while we have it and to be more deliberate about the choices we’re making.
For me, that’s the real value of memento mori. It isn’t about spending more time thinking about death or worrying about how much life we have left. It’s about allowing the reality that our time is limited to change how we experience the life we’re living right now. We may have less time than we think, which makes it all the more important that we don’t keep postponing the things that make that time meaningful.