Memento Mori: Wisdom Behind Life and Death

to be alive the odds against you being you will be in this world the way it is are astronomical and so confronting your mentality makes you aware of how marvelous and wonderful and incredible it is to actually be alive and to me that is Sublime [Music] you know we could argue about everything we humans everybody you know politically argues you know the sky is this color it's that color Etc We can't agree on anything there's one reality that not a single person can deny and that is that we're all going to die it's the one

basic reality that is staring each and every one of us in the face There Is No Escape as Jim Morrison said no one here gets out alive and so the idea is here's this one basic fundamental reality that every single one of us share president from presidents to homeless people and yet nobody talks about it you never have any kind of philosophical discussion about how do we deal with our mortality not how do we deal with dying itself how we deal with the pain of it but how we deal with the thought of it every

day that it could happen tomorrow you know their books written about it obviously the stoics and other philosophers but as a culture we don't discuss it and to me that's that's insane right it used to be a huge part of culture and religion is how to deal with the concept of mortality is you know what religion and culture was about for so many centuries right and it's not easy dealing with it because the thought of it is obviously unpleasant the thought of it is you know I I mean I think about all the time in

my meditation it's deeply disturbing but on the other hand confronting it instead of turning your back on it and ignoring it and repressing it which is what we do in our culture you know we don't see people dying they all die on these hospitals far away from our view we don't see the animals that we eat being slaughtered that's all happens away from our view you know in our movies we see people being gunned down like left friends Center but it's like a cartoon it's not real it's not personal so we're in massive denial and

massive repression mode and it wasn't you didn't used to be that way because 300 years ago you were seeing dead people all the time your family or others they would die in the house you would see dead people in the street you would see the animals being killed you'd see the blood spurting out of them all right and so the idea is it shouldn't be this element of fear it should be actually something you should turn your back around and look at it squarely in the eye and it's not to be gloomy or morbid but

that confronting your mortality looking at Square in the face instead of turning your back is incredibly liberating for various reasons it makes it clear to you that your days are numbered it means I better have a sense of urgency and Desperation to get things done in my life I better have the requisite energy I better appreciate the people who are around me my loved ones because they could be gone tomorrow it gives a certain intensity to life confronting this reality okay so I wrote that chapter in uh last chapter in May of 2018 and combined

with it was this idea of the sublime which is in looking at our mortality you're confronting the nature of of life itself and you're becoming aware of how insane it is to just be alive to be alive the odds against you being you will be in this world the way it is are astronomical and so confronting your mentality makes you aware of how marvelous and and wonderful and incredible it is to actually be alive and to me that is Sublime anyway I wrote that in May of 2018 the last chapter and I was exhausted it

was a really hard book to write and but I done it and now I was kind of you know getting ready for the publicity Etc and then August 17 of 2018 literally three months afterwards I suffered a stroke and in that stroke my girlfriend then Anna she basically saved my life I was driving my car it happened forced me to pull over and I came this close to die a um I I would have probably gotten in a terrible accident and B I wouldn't have gotten attention in time and either I would have died or

I would have had severe brain damage and I would not be here talking to you right now it was very fortunate everything kind of fell into place where a hospital was nearby the ambulance came they were able to put something in my neck to stop the blood clot that had stopped the flow of blood to my brain everything worked out so that I ended up not only surviving but with my cognitive abilities intact as far as I know and so I was thinking this chapter that I had just written about confronting your mortality it was

really ironic because now I actually had to go through the experience whereas before it was this kind of intellectual exercise about the importance of being aware of your mortality now it was very real now it was visceral I had been in a coma for for a while I had this I wouldn't say a near-death experience with these kind of strange Sensations that invaded My Body Sensations that I still have to this day feelings of like my bones kind of disintegrating as I'm sitting here anyway I come out of the hospital and I have to deal

with the fact that I'm alive but I'm kind of in this feeble State and everything I wrote about in the chapter was true it changed my perspective in life it gave me a totally altered view about what it means to be alive and what I wrote about wasn't this weird abstract intellectual idea academic idea about confronting your death it is very very very real and the power it contains is very very very real you know just sitting in my office and hearing the birds chirp in the morning and seeing the sun shine is to me

like this experience because I know it could have been taken away from me I right now as a person might be dead I wouldn't exist and you know I think about that all the time so what I wrote about is very true it's not that I don't have difficult moments dealing with this situation but my overall philosophy my view of the fact of being alive is completely altered through this confrontation with death and you don't have to go through a near-death experience to have this that's the point of the chapter you can mentally go through

it you can mentally meditate on your mortality you can mentally imagine like I used to do in my meditation I still do literally thinking about that last day of your life and what it means and give it a kind of visceral reality give it something kind of physical where it's not just something intellectual it's something in your it's in your body and you feel it it's not going to be as strong as a stroke or in your death experience but it'll have a tremendous amount of therapeutic value for you there are ways where you can

do this confrontation mentally without having to go through the physical experience itself people have been writing about this for Millennia but it's very real and it's very powerful and I deal with all of the aspects of what confronting your mortality can do including with the fact that it can make you understand and feel more empathetic towards other people around you I want you to when you look at people when you look at your friends when you even look at your enemies when you look at your parents I want you to see their mortality in them

to actually feel it and this will create a deeper more profound connection with the greater sense of empathy and the thing was I'd intend to write a book on the sublime because it's a concept very important to me about 16 years ago it was going to be what I wrote after the 33 Strategies of War I've done the research I was getting ready I'd done a proposal and then I got the 50 Cent book which kind of took me off on a different route for one book and then Mastery came up and then human nature

came up and it kind of got pushed to the side and I intended to come back to it and now I am finally coming back but it's my next book but the weird thing is I had intended to write that book as I said 16 years ago where I was going to go around the world having all of these insane experiences I was going to swim with dolphins I was going to go to Tierra del Fuego I was going to climb mountains in Afghanistan if you know obviously without the war or whatever or somewhere else

and I was going to have these Sublime moments that I was going to write about and here I am now I can barely walk up the street where I live I can barely go three or four blocks I can't hike I can't swim with dolphins I can't go climb mountains I had to change the book I'm still writing about it but what happened is sitting in my chair in my office in my house here in Los Angeles writing about it and thinking about it has had this incredible impact for me incredible therapeutic value I am

immersed in Sublime thoughts and moments and ideas every day and I don't have to get out of my chair so if I had written that book 16 years ago flying off to Argentine Etc I think some people would go yeah Robert that's interesting but you know I I can't afford that what does it have to do with my life you're kind of this privileged guy who can spend all that money blah blah blah and now that's not the book that I'm going to write but I think everybody can relate to it because you could be

slinging hamburgers at McDonald's and coming back to a studio apartment that's that's not what you want Etc but this book will show you that no matter what your circumstances are you are alive right now it's unbelievable Stroke of Luck that you are who you are that the world is the way it is and it's a book that will alter your whole way of thinking without you ever having to travel anywhere or do anything and so in a funny way it's almost like fate happened for a reason I know that we don't like to think about

like that anymore in this world because we're so modern and sophisticated in faith that's something that only stupid superstitious people believe in but the fact that I came this close to dying but didn't die it had my brain intact it feels kind of weird could it have happened for a purpose probably not but I like to think it did you know and the fact that I have to write a book now in these altered circumstances probably didn't happen for a purpose but I like to think that it did I like to think that it was

a matter of Fate that all of these things came together and this is going to be the book that happens and I think more and more and more of the problem that a lot of us face is we don't have these kind of thoughts that sort of Transport us beyond our banal real day-to-day realities we need more of these connection to something larger than ourselves