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CONVERSATION LESSON

MEMENTO MORI

Dan: Hey, hey. AC, what do you say?

Aaron: Not much, man. I’m doing all right. How’re you doing?

Dan: Hanging in there?

Aaron: I’m hanging in there, man. I’m doing my thing, you know. What about you?

Dan: I’m doing all right.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: Doing all right.

Aaron: That’s good.

Dan: Yeah. Thinking a lot about living life fully.

Aaron: Yeah. And what kind of things you been thinking about?

Dan: Well, I was just thinking about all the time that I waste, and when I get distracted, and I get pulled away from the things that are important in my life like Deep English, growing Deep English, my family, and I find myself watching inane videos on YouTube.

Aaron: That’s a common way to escape, no doubt about it.

Dan: I started watching clips of old Sopranos TV episodes on YouTube.

Aaron: Okay, yeah. Tony Soprano.

Dan: And it’s a great show, but I’ve seen it.

Aaron: You’ve seen it already.

Dan: What am I doing?

Aaron: So what are you watching it again for?

Dan: What am I doing with myself? Yeah, I was inspired by some of the themes in this story about just remembering that our time is limited and how we need to make the most of it.

Aaron: Yes. Absolutely. Actually, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about that in the last few days. And yeah, it helps me focus on what’s important, so it’s good. It’s very good in that sense. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. There was a part of me that felt a little bit, I don’t know, a little bit worried about this lesson and how people are going to take it. Are they going to see this as a downer? Or are they going to see that this is really a call to action to enjoy life and cherish life? I think some people might see it as kind of a glass half empty sort of thing.

Aaron: Oh, right, right.

Dan: How many days you got left? Why are you looking at it that way?

Aaron: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I don’t know. For me, the topic is, certainly people are going to take it in different ways. But yeah, for me the topic is inspiring because it reminds us of life and … I mean, you can’t separate the two. They’re part of the same process. And if you forget the other side, like you said, you get distracted by things that don’t matter. And you start spending time in ways that are not fulfilling to you. If you can keep that reality in your consciousness and your awareness, if that’s at the background of everything that you do, I think it can give new meaning to what you’re experiencing.

Dan: Yeah. I think it’s so easy to lose yourself in distraction or in things that may seem important, but aren’t really.

Aaron: Sure.

Dan: That’s why I love that legend of the Roman general. You can just imagine him being on the top of the world. He’s coming home, returning home victorious after defeating some German barbarians. And the whole world is … Or the city of Rome, which is the center of the world in their minds.

Aaron: At that time. Right. Yeah.

Dan: Is feteing the victorious general, and he has the wherewithal to remember, or to make it someone’s job-

Aaron: To help him remember. Right.

Dan: That this is just one level of life, and that there’s something greater and more important.

Aaron: Right, and that’s coming. That’s coming sooner than later, perhaps.

Dan: Yeah, apparently it was a Stoic philosophy, which I guess is ancient Greeks, the Stoics.

Aaron: Yeah, perhaps. Sounds like it.

Dan: I think for them the angle was in remembering that your time is limited, that it gets you to focus on cultivating virtue in life.

Aaron: Well, that’s a common theme also in many of the major religions of the world, that of, you’ve got to die before you can live. Of course, that is interpreted in many different ways. But one of the ways that I kind of see it is the you, meaning ‘the ego’ you, has to die. You’ve got to see the ego for what it is, and not get all wrapped up in that ego, because when you do, you forget that’s not actually you. That’s just one aspect of your existence.

Dan: That’s a very Eastern way of looking at it. The Eastern philosophy found in Hinduism, or Buddhism, or maybe even Taoism, is this focus on living in the present moment so that we don’t get lost in illusion, which is maybe our fantasies about what might happen, or what’s happened, or dwelling too much on what’s happened in the past. And then we miss the reality of the here and now. So that’s why I thought it was really interesting that Kevin Kelly kind of flipped it on its head and said that element is important too, is that his remembering the future.

While normally we hear all of the kind of live in the present moment philosophy that tells us to forget about the future.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: Of course, I think Eastern philosophers, they’re not saying to not take care of the environment. Only think about today.

Aaron: Right, or just completely forget about the past, of course not.

Dan: But yeah, I thought that was interesting that during that six months where he thought he was going to die, he said, “In order to live fully, I’m not going to think about it at all what actually will happen in six months.”

Aaron: One of the interesting things about his story that I sort of questioned was this. He had this kind of spiritual awakening or spiritual experience when he was in … Was it Jerusalem?

Dan: Jerusalem, yeah.

Aaron: It was in Jerusalem. And he spent the night in that church, and he woke up and it just popped into his head that he’s got six months to live. I wonder how he actually interpreted that. Did he know that it was just probably not the case? Did he fully believe it? Or did he decide to himself, you know what, it’s going to be six months and I’m going to live my life as if I’m going to die in six months? Or did he truly think, you know what, this is it, I’m definitely out of here in six months?

Dan: I think it was both. There was a part of him that truly felt that was what was going to happen. And then there was a logical, rational side to him that said that’s crazy. Why would you believe that just because that idea popped into your head?

Aaron: Right. But I mean, it could be like, some people do these things. They have these experiments. They experiment on themselves, and I’m going to live my life in the next six months as if these are my last six months. I mean, I could totally see somebody entertaining that to see what would happen.

Dan: Right. I think it is weird he was holding both of those polar opposites that he was realizing that it maybe wasn’t true. But at the same time, he was feeling compelled to follow it. And part we didn’t include in the lesson, he talks about that bike ride, that there were a lot of dark times for him where he wasn’t necessarily thinking about his death, but there was a certain sadness in appreciating the present moment. He said he was writing haikus. One element that maybe people who have never been to Japan … Most people who don’t know too much about Japanese culture just think of a haiku poem as being a short, small poem with a certain amount of syllables.

Aaron: Yes. Right, right.

Dan: But there’s all these other kind of themes involved. And one of the themes is that the … What would you say, the transience of life?

Aaron: Yeah, the transience of life, right.

Dan: The fleeting nature of life.

Aaron: Exactly.

Dan: And he found himself, I guess he did understand that element of haikus.

And he found himself writing lots of haikus. Here in Japan, there’s all this appreciation of the elements of nature, like the cherry blossoms that are here for a short amount of time, just like we humans are here on this Earth for a short amount of time. And so I think while he talks about trying to be upbeat and trying to live in the moment, he was also holding some sadness of recognizing the loss.

Aaron: Yeah. I mean, I think the present moment is like that. It’s bittersweet because it doesn’t last. It’s so fleeting. It’s gone. The moment you even recognize it, or even try to conceptualize it, or describe it, it’s already gone. And our whole life is like that, and the relationships we have and who we see ourselves as, it’s constantly changing and it’s never the same. Trying to hold on to that and keep it is, well according to some philosophies, a source of great suffering. So it’s kind of like: How do you accept that and still live happily? Actually, I just read this. It was in the newspaper today. I saw it. They just released the … I don’t know if they just released it or they just reported it, but Harvard University, researchers at Harvard just released the results of a 70 year study.

Aaron: 70 years they followed a cohort of two different groups of people. One were really highly educated Harvard grads. And the other were a group of poor people from a lower socioeconomic class. And there were a lot of people. I can’t remember the number. But they followed them for 70 years and they found that what made people … The number one key indicator of someone’s happiness in life was their connection to others, like relationships. And that was the most important thing for people who, regardless of your socioeconomic, or educational background, or how much money you were making, it was just being in connection with a community of people in a meaningful way.

Aaron: And I just thought that was quite interesting because this guy Kelly, when he thought about how he’s going to spend his last six months, it was related to the people he loved the most, the family. He just wanted to do normal things, spend time with his family. And even when he got the travel bug, he wanted to hang out with his brothers and sisters. So he got on a bicycle and rode around.

That was what was ultimately … That’s what mattered to him, so I thought that was interesting.

Dan: Yeah. I think that’s one of the things that I love about Deep English, is that it’s kind of a distant connection. We don’t have time to talk to too many of our members.

Aaron: Unfortunately, yeah.

Dan: But we get to share these ideas and help people bring in these kind of more meaningful topics into their English practice.

Aaron: And not only into their English practice, but I would imagine, and this is how I envision it, is that people bring these into their conversations with people they care about regardless of what language it is, their native language as well. It just reminds people of different interesting topics to talk about that are meaningful.

Dan: Yeah. So when I was thinking about what’s important to me and what I should be focusing on and the things that I can bring some passion to, it really made me feel lucky to be a part of Deep English.

Aaron: Absolutely, absolutely. Me too. That’s part of the thing that I remember when I’m in the … Especially in those times where it’s difficult, where we’re making lessons and we’re trying to come up with ideas and we’re struggling with other things like our bodies and our lives and our families. Yeah, it’s not easy. One of the key fundamental questions that arose for me in this lesson was at the very beginning. This question of: If you could choose to find out the day that you would die, would you want to know? If that were possible to know the exact date on which you’re going to pass away, would you want to know that? I thought that was a very interesting question. Would you want to know if you could know? If someone could tell you, “Dan, you’re going to die on this particular date in this particular year,” would you want to know that information?

Dan: I think that I probably would. I would want to know, but I would probably recognize that it wouldn’t be good for the quality of my life to know. I think it would shape or guide too many decisions. But I think I wouldn’t be able to resist.

Aaron: Really? Really?

Dan: If it was simply a matter of filling out a form. In the start of this lesson we talk about this imagined world, or this imagined future where you can fill out a form and get the answer from the government. And that’s the story that is online and it’s an interactive story where you can make choices and it then leads you down different branches of this tree and this world. It talks about the people who don’t want to know and the people who do want to know, and how most of the society, something like 85% want to know. And maybe a very small minority recognize that the act of knowing that starts to control your life.

Aaron: Absolutely.

Dan: And for them, it’s interesting. Both sides kind of feel that they’re able to live life more fully. The one side feels that with that knowledge, then they go, “Okay. I have this many years to live. I’ve got to make it count. And these are all the things that I want to do. I’ve got to make sure that I’m making steps every day.” And I think the side that doesn’t want to know feels that, that knowledge is not allowing them to live and is making them focus on this future and missing out on the spontaneity and the surprises of life, or a natural way of life.

Aaron: That’s how I feel. I would not want to know the day I’m going to die. Not out of fear, but for that very reason. I kind of feel like not knowing the future, not knowing what’s going to happen brings a certain amount of excitement and freedom to my daily existence. And it gives me sort of the sense that I can just live more fully. I could die tomorrow. I could die tonight. I mean, it can happen anytime. Or maybe I could live to be 150 with medical technology. I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. But it’s a conditional question because if I found out that I had a terminal illness or something, or if I knew I was in the autumn years of my life, I was getting close to the end, maybe I would want to know. Maybe at that point, knowing that I’ve lived a full life already, maybe the final years might be … It might be a useful piece of information. I don’t know.

Dan: What if you were to find out that you had one month left?

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: That would probably reallyAaron: Shake you to the core.

Dan: Really shake, you’d really be thinking, “What can I do for my family in these last few weeks?”

Aaron: Sure. That would pretty much occupy every minute of my existence if I only had a month to live. I’d want to prepare for that.

Dan: Yeah. And I think that we’ll never be in this place where we’ll know exactly when we’re going to die, but we’re moving in that direction as they’re able to decode our genes or the human genome.

Aaron: Well, yeah. ButDan: We’re going to have a lot more information on how we’re likely going to go.

Aaron: Yeah, perhaps. But they can’t tell you if you’re going to get hit by a bus when you walk out the door and try and cross the street.

Dan: That’s interesting. I read another fantasy thought experiment where you don’t learn the day you’re going to die. You learn how you’re going to die.

Aaron: Oh, how you’re going to die. Gosh, no. That would be terrible.

Dan: You don’t know when, but you know it’s a bus, or you know it’s cancer.

Aaron: Yeah. But what if it were like, you’re going to drown to death?

Dan: Right.

Aaron: It’s like, you would never go near water. That would totally change your life. You would just stay away from bathtubs. You’d never take a shower. You wouldn’t go outside when it’s raining. That would totally … Yeah. That’d be crazy.

Dan: You can imagine that if, back to the fantasy world where you know when you’re going to die, if you know for certain that you’re not going to die until you’re 105, you’re going to be taking a lot of risks.

Aaron: Oh, right. Yeah, right.

Dan: Because you know it’s not a risk.

Aaron: Time to go skydiving.

Dan: Can you imagine? And what governments would do with that, like recruiting militaries of people they know are not going to die.

Aaron: Oh, right. It just seems like it’s a question in fantasy world, where it just is so hypothetical, which is crazy.

Dan: Yes. Yeah, it’s silly. I actually heard the author. She put this thought experiment to a woman who is actually dealing with terminal illness. And she was kind of annoyed by it. She was like, “I don’t want to hear your dumb fantasy.”

Aaron: “I’m dying, man. Leave me alone.”

Dan: I know what this is really like. And it was interesting. She said that she kind of was carrying both sides of it as well. She was saying that there are times where she really experiences things much more deeply. When she laughs out loud, she really feels that and really appreciates it. And then on the other side, there are times where it’s not like she’s just able to live in the moment. It’s incredibly horrible and scary.

Aaron: Yeah. Wow.

Dan: But yeah, for some people this is not just a fun little idea. It’s something that they struggle with. And I think some of them do find some kind of meaning in their limited time left. And the truth of the matter is that, back to this idea of Memento Mori, is that it is coming for us all. And the memory of that, hopefully, can help us make the better decisions.

Aaron: And perhaps even appreciate our experiences more, like the simple act of drinking a cup of hot tea around someone we care about.

Dan: Yeah. Rather than watching YouTube videos.

Aaron: Watching YouTube videos of The Sopranos. I’m not so sure that’s the most meaningful way to spend one’s existence. But, yeah.

Dan: All right. On that note, until next time.

Aaron: Okay. We’ll talk to you later.