MEMENTO MORI — YOU COULD LEAVE LIFE RIGHT NOW

Memento Mori, translated from Latin, means “Remember, you must die”. It’s a wake-up that your life course could be radically altered and end at any moment. Our lives are impermanent, in constant flux and change, flowing through time towards entropy and inevitable death that might happen without warning. Memento Mori — You could leave life right now.

Recently, an acquaintance passed away. It shook our group as Rick, a likeable and apparently healthy man in his sixties, was suddenly diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Within a week, Rick was gone.

It made me reflect on my own mortality. I do this as part of my stoicism studies. As a student of stoicism, I carry a Memento Mori medallion in my pocket. I got it through Ryan Holiday who hosts the website and podcast called The Daily Stoic.

Memento Mori isn’t meant to be macabre. It’s a positive philosophical exercise to reflect on being in the moment and living life to the fullest. One measure of success is being free to live your life as you see fit and tchotchkes, or bric-a-brac prompts like this gold medallion, help keep me mindful of mortality and to live life in accordance with nature—in accordance with reason and harmony which is fundamental to stoicism.

Some time ago, I wrote a post titled Stoicism — A Philosophy, Not a Religion. I’m not going to go further into stoic principles. You can read them by clicking here. What I’m doing today is exploring the origin of Memento Mori and offering some advice on how you can use an old Latin phrase to help guide you through a wonderful, appreciative life.

According to a trusted source, the Galileo Galilei Institute in Turin, Memento Mori originated as an ancient Roman custom. When a victorious general returned from a battle, he was paraded through the streets of Rome in a chariot to honor his achievements. However, that praise and adulation could dent his hubris (go to his head) so a slave stood behind the general whispering in his ear, “Respice post te. Hominem te memento mori”. Or “Remember that you are a man who must die”.

Over centuries, the Latin phrase has been repeated among many cultures, in different languages, but always with the same meaning. Remember, you must die.

In the 17th century, for example, in the cloistered order of Trappist friars, they repeated “Memento Mori” to each other while they dug their graves, bit-by-bit, day-by-day. It was always to keep their death in mind and not lose sight of the impermenance and value of life.

During the Renaissance period of Europe, a dance genre called Danse Macabre was extraordinarily popular. People would dress as skeletons and waltz through the streets, impersonating death and singing praise to Memento Mori. One of the great art works of the era, Vanitas, portrays Memento Mori as a tulip for life, a skull for death, and an hourglass for time.

In simple terms, Memento Mori serves as a personal prod to be mindful and present in any given moment. It’s not to be depressing about losing your life. Rather, Memento Mori is a tool to create priority and meaning. It’s to gain perspective on what’s important and what’s not important.

Death doesn’t make life pointless. Instead, introspection of death shows how purposeful life is—what our lives are capable of and what we can accomplish with the time we’re granted—a reflection about the temporaryness of life and how we can live our moments with intention, courage, and gratitude.

The reality of death is it’s one of life’s guarantees. (So are taxes.) Death is the great equalizer. No matter where you were born, into what class, how rich or poor you are, how clever or dim, how famous or obscure, or what you did with your life, the Grim Reaper eventually calls.

What you do with your life, and spend your time, is one of life’s freedoms. Aside from the gene cards you were dealt at birth, you are the master of your fate. And you can use the Memento Mori concept to your benefit. Here are some practical tips:

Daily Reflection. Set aside a few minutes each day to contemplate the impermanence of your life and the inevitability of your death. This helps you stay grounded, lets you prioritize your time and tasks, and lets you put energy into what’s important in your life.

Practice Gratitude. Memento Mori encourages you to appreciate the people, opportunities, and experiences in your life. You can cultivate gratitude by expressing thanks for the things you cherish and the time you have to enjoy them.

Journal. One of the core stoic practices is to maintain a daily journal. Writing down your thoughts, including your reflection and gratitude, gives you clarity, focus, and purpose.

Mindful Decision Making. Use Memento Mori when faced with decisions, both large and small, as a guiding principle to evaluate choices and set priorities. Ask yourself if your time were limited, would you take on that activity or give it a pass.

Embrace Courage. If facing death, how would you respond? Memento Mori can help you overcome fear and weigh risks. By remembering your time is limited, you may be more inclined to follow opportunities and experience new challenges.

Foster Deeper Connections. Recognizing that time is fleeting will make you more appreciative of family, friends, neighbors, and so forth. Remember that Memento Mori applies to them too.

Cultivate Detachment. Reminding yourself that you can leave life right now puts a new light on material possessions, social status, and achievements. This awareness fosters a deep appreciation for what’s truly important in life and, equally, what’s not.

Personal Growth. Memento Mori can inspire you to focus on self-improvement and embracing the four cardinal virtues: temperance, courage, justice, and wisdom. By understanding the impermanence of life, you’ll be motivated to continually strive to be the best version of yourself.

Remembering Memento Mori daily can be an ode to life. It encourages us to stop wasting time in pursuing other people’s goals, hoarding material possessions, or worrying about trivial matters. It’s about being free to live your life, and spend your time, as you see fit.

 

SCRAPS OF WISDOM — KEEPING A COMMONPLACE BOOK

Creative writing stands upon two concrete, foundational pillars. Ideas and information. As a metaphor, information is cement and ideas are the mixer. You can’t build a story or construct an article without either. And there’s a long-used tool that lets you blend ideas and information within one toolbox. The box contains scraps of wisdom—keeping a commonplace book.

Just as it sounds, it’s storing your scraps of ideas and bits of information in one common place. This creative support isn’t new. It’s been used over the millennia by great thinkers and writers like Marcus Aurelius, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Virginia Woolf, Ayn Rand, John Locke, H.P. Lovecraft, Mark Twain, and Isaac Newton to name a few. Many creatives today retain a commonplace to fuel and inspire them, and many swear it’s their main receptacle of wisdom.

I started the DyingWords blog thirteen years ago. After creating five hundred posts, writing twenty-one book publications, and penning several thousand content pieces for commercial websites, my commonplace book has grown into three volumes cut & pasted full of quotes, sayings, anecdotes, observations, jokes, memes, proverbs, prayers, affirmations, formulas, sermons, remedies, pictures, drawings, topics, discoveries, examples, situations, comments, captures, notes, insights, lyrics, phrases, and even recipes. All are little scraps that arise through information and maybe will morph into big ideas.

I’m going to open my commonplace book and show you a random selection of what’s inside. You never know, you might find a takeaway you can build upon. First, let’s look at the big picture of what commonplace books are. And, equally important, what commonplace books are not.

The best descriptor I could find of a commonplace book is a Personal Knowledge Management System. If you Google “commonplace book” or ask ChatGPT, you’ll find oodles of links and helpful tips on a centralized, personally curated, and continuously maintained collection can be—personally curated being the operative phrase. This is not the sort of database you can buy at Staples (although you can buy binders like I use for mine).

At the core, your commonplace book is like a strainer. It’s a tool for storing and sifting whatever you come across that seems interesting, pertinent, or might come handy in the future. By the way, you don’t have to be a creative writer to keep a commonplace. It works for recipes, sports cards, dried insects or leaves, bus tickets, celebrity autographs, and even biological samples if you’re into it.

Seriously, commonplace books are private spaces for private thoughts. They are not daily logs, narrative journals, to-do lists, or drafts of work-in-place. Commonplace books are simply scrapbooks but generally lean toward one theme. In my case, they contain ideas and information I can use to develop projects and better understand the world.

The word “commonplace” traces back to ancient Greece where a law courts speaker or politician would keep an assortment of arguments in a “common place” for easy reference. The Romans called them locus communis meaning “a theme or argument of general application” such as a statement of proverbial wisdom. But the commonplace book would only come into its own during the European Enlightenment when an exploding volume of printed media collided with changing political and societal norms. Commonplace books provided a private place for people to note information and store it to help work out thoughts and ideas.

In 1706, philosopher John Locke described his archival process in a book titled A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. This set the standard for what would become a mainstream storage and organizational system that allowed their keeper to act in the external world more effectively by isolating truly important material. In Locke’s words and vernacular of the times, We extract only those Things which are Choice and Excellent, either for the Matter itself, or else for the Elegancy of the Expression, and not what comes next.

A fundamental structure of commonplace books is they’re not structured in any order—not a flowing or chronological narrative such as recording in a personal journal. Rather, they’re a random collection of come-across snippets that relate to the beholder and are meaningful in some or many ways.

Most creatives understand the value in writing down ideas. There’s a cognitive link between discovering information and transposing it by hand to a page. Capturing and retaining words and images then storing in in a repository frees up mental horsepower for thinking and creating. Material in a commonplace book becomes an extension of the mind—a backup of what can be profound as a personal compass or a guide—a mental sketchbook.

I’ll relate my personal story of developing a commonplace book. Ten years ago, I was working with my writing mentor. That was back before he was famous, and I still had some color in my hair. He asked, “Do you keep a commonplace book?” I replied, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s a scrapbook where you store bits of wisdom for future reference and motivation.”

That hit home about putting my scraps of wisdom into a book. Till then, I had yellow, sticky Post-it notes stuck about my studio. I had pictures and photocopies and cut-outs and banners of relevant stuff here and there and all over the place. It was a mess and growing messier by the week.

I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I went to Staples and bought a three-ringed binder and some clear sheet protectors along with a roll of Scotch tape. For what seemed like hours, I peeled and pasted my relevant stuff onto the sheets and made sure there was no particular order—just a random bunch of, well, relevant stuff.

It’s now grown to three binders and nearly ready for a fourth. Usually, I see an image or a quote on the net or in my email and I either screenshot or highlight it, transfer into a Word.doc, print it, and then simply scissor it out and tape it onto the clear sheet. It’s just like playing with paper dolls.

I’m not saying my binder method is right for you or anyone else. I’ve read that others use index cards. Some store digitally. And a few use a plain old notebook. Whatever works to store and retrieve your scraps of wisdom.

Enough about this. I’m sure you’d like to snoop through my three commonplace volumes. Welcome to my writing and recording studio. Here’s some random snips!

 

HOW A PLANTED BRITISH CORPSE HOAXED THE NAZI WAR MACHINE

In April 1943, the body of Royal Marine Major William Martin washed up on the Spanish shore. With him were top secret documents confirming the Allies planned invasion of Italy via Greece and the Balkans rather than through Sicily which the Axis expected. This critical information caused Hitler to change strategy and redeploy forces leaving Sicily practically undefended. But it was a trick, a brilliant and resourceful scam conducted by British Naval Intelligence, and it worked. The body was not Major Martin, rather a homeless derelict—a planted British corpse that hoaxed the Nazi war machine.

This elaborate ruse was perhaps the most ingenious fraud ever perpetrated in a global conflict. It was a shrewd and crafty gambit that took incredible preparation and was flawlessly executed. With Sicily wide open as the soft underbelly of Europe, the Allied forces took the land much sooner and with far fewer casualties than earlier anticipated, thanks to a sacrificed body. As a British intelligence officer who helped mastermind Operation Mincemeat said about the repurposed cadaver, “The man was a bit of a ne’er-do-well. The only worthwhile thing he ever did came after his death. He was possibly the most unlikely hero of the entire Second World War.”

We’ll get into who this dead drifter really was and how he came to con the Nazis as well as how the British organized the deceit. First, though, let’s look at history and what was going on in the Mediterranean in the spring of 1943 that required such an elaborate fake.

By January 1943 the Allies had nearly secured victory against the Axis in North Africa. British and American planners set their sights on an Italian invasion to take down Mussolini and drive their way up Italy and into the heart of Europe with the end goal of destroying the German forces. The obvious route was from North Africa and through Sicily. The Axis planners knew this too and were well prepared to stop it.

“Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it’s Sicily,” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said at the time. “We must find a way to divert this obvious strategy. We need Hitler to believe it’s going to be Greece and the Balkans.”

That task fell to the British Office of Naval Intelligence and was code-named Operation Barclay. The disinformation campaign was overseen by Admiral John Godfrey and assisted by Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming who would later go on to be the famous spy novelist, creating James Bond. It was Fleming who came up with the idea of planting a dead body carrying highly classified but completely false documentation that would find its way straight to the Nazi top.

The fake body sub-project of Barclay was named Operation Mincemeat. It was approved by Prime Minister Churchill and Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower. However, it was a calculated risk for if the Axis detected a ploy, it might have cemented a conviction that Sicily was the true target and the eventual invasion could be a disaster for the Allies.

Godfrey and Fleming assigned the job to intelligence officers Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley). Montagu and Cholmondeley started their body search on February 4, 1943, by contacting the London coroner service. There were some strict parameters to have the cadaver fit the role of a highly trusted messenger—male, Caucasian, mid-thirties to early forties, in reasonable physical shape, recently deceased with limited decomposition, not autopsied, and with a cause of death being consistent with exposure to water and drowning. Also, that the dead man had no close relatives or anyone who would claim the body as this operation had to be kept vitally secure.

They quickly found their man. Welshman Glyndwr Michael, age 32, died on January 24, 1943, and was stored in the London morgue. Michael was a homeless man with no relatives to claim him. He’d been found unconscious in a vacant warehouse, presumably after eating bread scraps laced with rat poison, and died in hospital from pneumonia complications. As the cause of death was clear, the coroner did not autopsy Glyndwr Michael and had him cold stored awaiting a legal disposal.

Glyndwr Michael was the perfect fit. His remains were still in good shape, and the effect of pneumonia and fluid on the lungs would be consistent with appearing to be drowning after an airplane crash over the Atlantic waters off western Spain. The coroner, whose delightful name was Bentley Purchase, released Michael to Cholmondeley and Montagu who moved the cadaver to a truck loaded with dry ice.

Now it was time to build a detailed and credible backstory, knowing full well that German intelligence would have a microscopic look to see if Major Willam Martin was real or not.

William Martin was a common and unassuming name. He was given the rank of Captain, Acting Major in the Royal Marines and outfitted with the appropriate uniform and insignias. His military identification was carefully forged with a dead-ringer, look-alike photo and his “pocket fodder” was meticulously built. Major Martin’s effects included:

  • Two dated ticket stubs to a London concert.
  • A receipt for the purchase of a diamond engagement ring.
  • A bank demand for repayment of an overdraft note.
  • A photo of his finance “Pam”.
  • A love letter from Pam.
  • A contentious letter from his father citing family troubles.
  • Stamps, coins, and bills.
  • A metal identity band.
  • Saint Christoper’s medal.
  • Wristwatch and keys.

These items were corroborative to the normal life of a person like Major Martin. While they were convincing of his identity, the prize and purpose of this ruse sat inside a black attaché case chained to his belt holding an explicit document—an official dispatch from Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Nye, vice chair of the Imperial General Staff, to General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the 18th Army Group stationed in North Africa. Part of the letter read:

We have recent information that the Bosche have been reinforcing and strengthening their defences in Greece and Crete and C.I.G.S. felt that our forces for the assault were insufficient. It was agreed by the Chiefs of Staff that the 5th Division should be reinforced by one Brigade Group for the assault on the beach south of CAPE ARAXOS and that a similar reinforcement should be made for the 56th Division at KALAMATA.

To add further credibility, the attaché case contained an introductory letter for Major Martin addressed to Admiral of the Fleet Sir A.B. Cunningham who was in Algiers. It was personally signed by Lord Louis Mountbatten.

It was now trap setting time. Major Martin’s dressed and outfitted corpse was loaded into the British submarine HMS Seraph. At night, on April 30, 1943, the Seraph surfaced 1/4 mile off the coast of Huelva, Spain. The body, fitted in a military flotation device, was set into the sea. Given a pull by an incoming tide and a push by the submarine’s propellers, the floating corpse washed up on the Spanish shore where it was found around 9:30 am by two Spanish fishermen.

This was an intentional and calculated offloading site. Allied intelligence was fully aware of an active spy well connected to the Nazis living in Huelva. They also knew the operations of the Huelva authorities who recovered the body. As per their death investigation protocol, Major Martin’s body was autopsied. A later obtained report concluded the death was drowning after exposure to sea water with his identity confirmed by the effects he was carrying. The Martin remains were released to the local British consulate, and he was formally buried in a Huelva cemetery where he still lies today.

So, what became of the secret messages? This is where the story gets interesting. After Major Martin was reported missing and presumed dead, the British authorities began a “frantic” search for him and with an “obsessed” interest in recovering the sensitive material. Their communication with the Spainards was intercepted by Nazi intelligence who now knew what was in those documents.

History proves the Nazis obtained copies of all material that was in the case connected to Martin’s belt. The sealed envelope was steamed open and resealed after immersion in salt water. Promptly, all of Martin’s effects, including the “never opened” case, were given to the consulate and returned to England.

Cleverly, the Operation Mincemeat team knew the Nazis had swallowed the bait. They’d placed an eyelash inside the sealed envelope when it left with Major Martin. Now the eyelash was gone.

History also proves the Martin documents reached German High Command in Belin and to the Fuhrer himself. After the war, a British officer in charge of examining the captured German naval archives uncovered a file especially prepared for Admiral Karl Donitz and Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel prior to a meeting with Hitler dated 14 May 1943, fourteen days after Martin’s body was discovered. In it were copies of all the Martin documents and a notation from Donitz that “The Fuhrer does not agree that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. He believes that the discovered Anglo-Saxon order confirms that the attack will be directed mainly against Sardinia and the Peloponnesus.”

The Allied invasion on Sicily began on July 10, 1943. It met with light resistance due to Hitler being convinced that “the authenticity of the captured documents is beyond dispute”. He moved most Sicilian defense forces across to the Balkans, and the rest is history. A planted British corpse truly hoaxed the Nazi war machine.

Exerpt from the book The Man Who Never Was written by Ewen Montagu: