VIII

A whisper follows you through each day’s scenes: memento mori-remember you must die. This solemn mantra weaves through mundane means.

You carry a secret beneath the sky: the knowledge that all you hold is fleeting. Death stands beside you, an unblinking eye.

Yet rather than horror, this daily meeting with death’s visage grants you a sharper sight. Colors are brighter, each breath more fleeting-

fleeting yet precious. By knowing the night awaits at day’s end, you savor the noon. No moment is wasted, purpose burns bright.

The flower by the roadside, gone too soon, is dearer for its fragility. The faces of loved ones, in death’s cocoon

one day they’ll rest-so now, more lovingly you gaze at them, speak heart’s truth unrestrained. No room for petty pride or enmity.

“Remember you will die”-this refrain liberates you from trivial distress. When anger or envy flare in your brain,

the thought of your mortality will press those poisons into perspective small. Why cling to rancor when death ends all?

Instead you choose to let gratitude sprawl across your heart like a golden sunrise. Each ordinary day becomes a festival,

for any day lived fully is a prize. You wear mortality like a garland, not morbid, but to keep your living wise.

The Stoic sage in you now understands what emperors and monks have long practiced: to hold a skull or an hourglass in hand

and thus recall time’s river can’t be stopped. By dying daily in your mind’s eye, you cheat death’s surprise-its sting is dropped.

No more do you shrink or frantically try to ignore the inevitable final night; instead you invite death in as ally.

At the table of life, death sits in sight, reminding you gently: “This too shall pass.” So drink deep the wine of this day’s delight.

In the mirror each dawn, you see but glass- the face looking back will one day be clay. So you smile at that fragile mortal mass,

and vow to make count each unfolding day. Memento mori etched on your soul’s door makes living more vivid in every way.

By keeping death close, you live all the more, heart unafraid, for you’ve embraced what’s in store.