As the seasons began to change and the beautiful decay of autumn crept into the forests around us, the Sleepy Bois Club decided to gather and celebrate the onset of the spooky season the best way we knew how, by contemplating our eventual deaths.

This practice has a long and storied past most commonly known as Memento Mori (Latin for “remember that you die”). The general idea is that taking time to reflect on the ephemeral nature of life can help us remember to actually enjoy the moments we are in and motivate us to do something more with the short time we have. Through the mindful application of Memento Mori, we might find that, when compared to the finality of death, our anxieties become nearly insignificant and we are more able to live the kind of life we want to live.

The activity we undertook was writing our own eulogies, following the format in an Attuned Psychology article. We started with a brief discussion on why we were contemplating our own death then jumped straight into writing our own remembrance. We first spent 8-10 minutes writing up the eulogy we would wish to be read upon our death, allowing us to consider the life we want to live and the things we want to be remembered for. After finishing this first eulogy, we then wrote the eulogy we wouldn’t want to be read at our funeral, taking the time to look at and evaluate our most salient fears, imagined failures, and dreaded losses.

The process of introspection was difficult at times, requiring us to accept both the positive and the negative aspects of our lives. But ultimately this activity led us to the final writing activity of making an action plan of how to avoid the bad eulogy and ensure the good eulogy, focusing on small goals we could set that would help us align with our values This thought process provided us with concrete steps we could take towards the life we want to live.

In the end, the sleepy bois avoided the cold hand of death for one day more,taking time to plan how better to use the fleeting time given to us. For me this includes drinking too much hot cocoa while talking about death with some really cool people.

View the study guide for this activity here: Memento Mori