You’re Still Here. Make It Count.

How the Morning Reminds Me: This Life Is Enough

A different kind of trail. Taken in May 2025

It’s always around seven or half seven when I lace up and step out. Regardless of the time of year, or weather. The air still clings to the softness of night, and the world just hasn’t quite decided what kind of day it wants to be yet.

The birds are more decisive, they’re already at it, nothing beats the morning chorus, it lures you in as if nothing could ever go wrong in the world.

I take the same trail every morning. It loops around the back of the main grounds of an estate, into a narrow path that threads through a patch of trees, then opens into fields that smells like warm grass and ancient history at this time of year.

I walk for my health. For the mind, and the sheer habitual essence of it.

But lately, I also walk to remember my mortality. And strangely enough, that thought keeps me company better than most people ever could.

The ancients had a name for this: memento mori. Remember that you are only mortal.

It wasn’t morbid to them. It was medicine. For context the phrase dates back to ancient Rome, where victorious generals were sometimes followed by a slave whispering in their ear, “Memento mori” — to remind them that, despite the glory, they too would die.

Artists and monks in the medieval period carried the idea forward, painting skulls in still life and carving hourglasses into chapel walls. Not to glorify death, but to frame life correctly.

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor who ruled an empire and his own mind with equal discipline, wrote in his Journal (2.11)

Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly… But death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

He wasn’t being dramatic. He was being precise in his reflection.

We are always just one heartbeat away from the end, and for most of the Stoics they knew that ignoring this fact was the surest path to wasting your life.

Memento mori isn’t meant to haunt you. It is meant to free you. From pettiness. From procrastination. From ego. From sleepwalking through the one thing you're guaranteed to lose.

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There’s a particular bend in the trail where the light comes in sideways through the trees. Golden. Hazy. Like the world’s letting you peek behind the curtain for a moment. I always slow down there. Not to think. Just to simply observe.

And some quiet little voice inside always says:

You get to see this today. But you won’t always.

That’s memento mori in essence, yes. But there's another phrase, one we don’t hear as often.

Memento vivere.
Remember to live.

It’s a gentle push back; if we are to die, then surely, we must also remember to live while we can. The two belong together. Death is the shadow that makes the light stand out.

Seneca, the millionaire Roman Stoic who wrote like his life depended on it (because in the end it did), wrote in the Shortness of Life:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

I think about passages like this a lot when I walk.

People usually hear the word death, and flinch. They think you’re being dark, dramatic. But if Stoicism and other schools teach anything, it’s that you have to look at death straight in the eye if you ever want to live with your eyes open.

It’s not about obsession. It’s about orientation.

You are dying. Slowly, beautifully, undeniably.
And that is the very reason to love the morning air.
To watch the steam rise from your tea.
To call your sister back.
To stop scrolling and start paying real attention.

Here’s the thing; I don’t feel grim when I think of death on these walks. I feel awake. If anything, I feel more alive than I do the rest of the day, hunched over a screen, taking care of admin, although generally enjoying my work and purpose.

Out there, in the early light, the message is clear:

This is it, Enda.

Not in a threatening way. Just the plain truth. This walk. The sky. My heart beating, and mind at ease, all coexist in universal harmony.

Death isn’t the villain. Forgetting you're alive is.

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Most mornings I’d pass an older man on the trail. Wearing a cloth cap, like he’d stepped out of another century. We’d nod, maybe smile. That’s all.

Then after a significant period of time, he was gone.

I never inquired, but I didn’t need to. Life had shifted. As it always does. Quietly, without fuss or permission.

That’s what memento mori teaches you too. Nothing is promised—not even tomorrow.

Epictetus, the hardened former slave, turned Stoic teacher somewhat starkly reminded parents to kiss their children goodnight while remembering: they are mortal.

Not to be cruel, or heartless - but to be grateful for the present scenario, and in his viewpoint ultimately accepting of what fate decides.

In the handbook of Epictetus by Arrian we get this reminder;

Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves—that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself. (V)

By the time I loop back to the house, the village is beginning to stir. Vans whizzing by, barking dogs, and construction workers unload their tools with purpose.

And I’m different, ever so slightly.

The day will rush me soon, emails, deadlines, worries about things that don’t matter nearly as much as we pretend.

But I’ve already had my moment.
I walked with death, and he didn’t ask for anything.
He just nodded, as if to say,

You’re still here. Make it count.

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Thanks for walking with me. I write these personal essays most weeks, alongside writing my own manuscript on similar topics; reflections on walking and hiking, mortality, ancient wisdom, and the ordinary beauty of being alive.

If this piece meant something to you, I’d be honoured if you shared it, or subscribed.

Until next time,
Memento vivere.

Enda (The Irish Stoic)

P.S I’ve just published two short book reviews this week, which I didn’t send out via email. You can read these below, if you’re interested in furthering your Philosophical practice with useful texts.