What's Death Got to Do With Growing Up?

Rules For a Knight, Memento Mori, Steve Jobs, CS Lewis, and other reflections on the benefits of thinking about death.

Hello Bar-setters,

At the end of last school year, I gave each member of my high school men’s group a copy of Rules for a Knight, by Ethan Hawke.

This is a short book that does a great job clarifying the path to becoming a certain kind of person. It offers an honor code and an aspirational ideal, similar to what I’ve tried to do with my Fire Carrier archetype. I’ll go into the full list of these Rules for a Knight some other time. Today, I want to focus on the final rule:

Death: Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us. A knight concerns himself with gratitude for the life he has been given. He does not fear death, for the work one knight begins, others may finish.

When I think about writing about death, I can’t help but feel a tad embarrassed. Like I’m Harry at the beginning of When Harry Met Sally—trying to look deep by broadcasting how often I’ve thought about death.

Perhaps for that same reason, most of us shy away from talking about death. Likewise, we usually try to avoid thinking about our own death, and we certainly avoid talking about death with our children. But Rules for a Knight makes the case that thinking about death is essential to the life well lived.

The entire book, in fact, is set against a backdrop of death.

Rules for a Knight is written as a letter from Sir Thomas Lemuel Hawke of Cornwall to his children. Sir Thomas writes in 1483 on the eve of the Battle of Slaughter Bridge. Anticipating his own death in the morning, Sir Thomas outlines the stories and lessons he had hoped to pass along to his four children.

As the book’s context demonstrates, death has a way of clarifying what really matters. Steve Jobs said something similar in his famous Stanford Commencement Address:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose (bolding is mine). You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Jobs was not the first to come to this conclusion. Most wisdom traditions explicitly claim that we should think about our own death on a regular basis.

Don’t Forget that You Have to Die

One of the most prominent Stoic adages is Memento mori, which means: "Remember you must die.”

The Stoics believed that by remembering your death, you will use your time better. You’ll focus more on what matters, feel less distress about small things, and come to accept your impermanence.

Likewise, Buddhists make it a practice to regularly think about their own impermanence. They call this practice mitakpa.

In his book, The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter recounts a conversation with Khenpo Phuntsho Tashi, a leading Buddhist thinker in Bhutan:

“You must think of mitakpa three times each day. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. You must be curious about your death. You must understand that you don’t know how you will die or where you will die. Just that you will die. And that death can come at any time,” he said. “The ancient monks would remind themselves of this every time they left their meditation cave. I, too, remind myself of this every time I walk out my front door.”

It’s one thing for monks and Stoics to suggest that you think about death regularly. They aren’t exactly known for being a good time. But they are not alone. Prominent Christian thinkers and happiness experts recommend the same.

Months ago, I suggested two fantastic podcasts:

• Tim Ferriss #692, Interview with Science of Happiness Expert Arthur Brooks

• The Five Shifts of Manhood, Jon Tyson on the Art of Manliness Podcast

Both of these episodes emphasize the importance of thinking about death. Harvard professor Arthur Brooks says he regularly does a death meditation where he focuses on losing the most important things to him. He claims that research shows that this helps reduce fear. He says that thinking about your death is among the best things you can do to be happier.

Jon Tyson highlights five crucial shifts that a boy must make to become a man. The fifth shift is “A shift from the temporary to the eternal.” Tyson’s Five Shifts are inspired by Father Richard Rohr’s Five Essential Truths. The shift from the temporal to the eternal is inspired by Rohr’s 5th Truth: “You are going to die.”

According to Rohr and Tyson, to become an adult you must accept your inevitable death and bring a recognition of it into the way you live your life—into your value system, your mindset, and the way you organize your time.

Your Life is Not Your Own

When I think about shifting from the temporary to the eternal, I’m reminded of another great podcast interview I have recommended, where David Brooks talks about the ethics of suicide. He uses that topic to make a wonderful, yet rare claim: your life may not be your own:

One vision…is: “I control myself, my body is my own, I get to do what I want. If I want to take my own life, I get to do that.” And that has a respectable philosophical pedigree. The other strain, which I guess I would associate with, is: “I'm not my own; I inherited my life from many ancestors who came before, and I have an obligation to pass it along to those who come after, and I do not have the right to take my own life.” And that if somebody is rushing to a bridge to jump off it, I'm going to do all I can to stop them. And, not only that, but I have inherited this massive moral tradition from the West and other parts of the world. I inherited a wonderful concept of citizenship by being born in America. I inherited a sense of reading and a special moral pressure from being born Jewish. I didn't create any of that. But it was gifted to me. And my job was to continue and carry it along and to pass it down, hopefully, a little better than I found it. And so I think these are two different conceptions of how you conceive of a life: “I control myself” versus “I'm just a piece in a long chain, and there are a lot of things about which I do not have control and do not have a choice and should not have a choice.

This is part of the lesson that death offers, which is vital for our children. Many people came before you. Many will come after. You are not here forever. You are a link in a much grander chain. You have a duty to pass on the amazing heritage you’ve received and leave your society in a better place than you found it. Let go of yourself and live for others. That’s where you’ll find meaning.

Putting Chaos Into Context

In the age of over-protective parenting, many parents try to avoid the mention of death around their children. But we may be the first generation ever who has tried to insulate our kids from the reality that is death.

Far from a source of “trauma” that requires therapy, death has been a central and inescapable part of human life for eons. Gradual, consistent exposure to death and loss serves as part of what develops our emotional immune systems.

Throughout almost all of human history, men would be in war by age 18. Infant mortality ranged near 50%. Life was lived on the verge of disease and disaster. And humans thrived, not despite these tragedies, but because of them.

Don’t get me wrong. It is wonderful that our lives today aren’t ravaged by as much death and chaos as was once typical. But there is also a loss. A loss of meaning. A loss of purpose. A lost reminder of what really matters. Which is why we must do the work to keep perspective.

This brings me to one last excerpt. Douglass Murray recently featured an old C.S. Lewis essay that came out in 1939, just as World War II was beginning. The English knew well what was on the horizon. Only two decades removed from World War I, they had done everything in their power to try to avoid this war. But it came. And Lewis used that unfortunate reality as an opportunity to offer some powerful advice, which I hope resonates with you as it has with me. Lewis writes:

I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumably they have their reward. Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.

Murray summarizes Lewis’s message like this:

Essentially, it is this: do not put off what you have to do in your life until the times are optimal. Because they never were optimal, and they never will be.

Human life, he notes, was always filled with distractions, alarms, panics, and tragedy. That is not what makes it remarkable. What makes life remarkable is that we get on with what we have to do in spite of these things. Alone among the creatures, we have the capability to understand the world around us and to have some sense of where it might be going. That could push us into despair and despondency. But the history of mankind is not that. It is that we did and do remarkable things, in spite of such knowledge.

Inspiring stuff. Makes you proud to be of such stock and motivated to maintain that heroic human heritage. This is a gift to offer your kids.

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Thank you for reading and sharing!

If you enjoyed this, check out this past post, which was placed on the PTDC’s best articles of the week list back during Covid lockdowns:

Carry the fire!

Shane