Meditate on your mortality🧘

The year was 1569 and young French nobleman Michel de Montaigne was enjoying what could’ve become his last day on earth.

After being flung from a galloping forse at high speed, Montaigne’s friends carried his bloodied body back home, as if they were carrying a corpse to the funeral home.

Hours semeed like minutes and Montaigne watched his life slip away from his physical self and right back again. An experience that shaped his entire existence, and his future readers as well.

This unusual experience marked an end of his previous life and a whole new beggining.

Within a few years, Montaigne would become one of the most famous writers in Europe, as well as serving as mayor, travel internationally as a dignitary, and much more.

A tale as old as time.

Man nearly dies, he takes stock, and emerges from the experience a completely different, and better, person.

But here’s a lesson to be learned for those with a keen eye.

We can change and better ourselves without the necessity of going through a near-death experience.

By meditating on our mortality, we’re basically reminding ourselves of how light our grip is on life, and nothing is for granted.

We may not like to talk about it but we behave like we’re invincibles yet deep down we know we aren’t impervious to the trials and tribulations of our own mortality.

And here lies the power of our fragil existence:

Embracing the precariousness of our own existence can be empowering.

By understanding and accepting that our existence is limited, that the diagnosis is terminal for all of us, that a sentence has been decreed, we’re empowering ourselves to do the best we can with the time we have.

It’s so beautiful and surprising how every single thing seems so little in comparisson to our own mortality.

Every major problem can be turned into a minor inconvinience in comparisson.

We must understand that it’s not in our control what will come and take us from life.

But! Thinking about it constantly creates a real perspective of urgency.

Reminding ourselves each day allows us to treat our time as a gift.

And by doing so, we’re turning life’s greatest adversity into a possitive, into an opportunity.

And so, if even our own mortality can have some benefit, how dare you say you can’t derive value from adversity…