The greatest honor a Roman could experience was a triumph after coming home from the battlefield. Even though it was a moment to celebrate them, they sent a servant to whisper in their ear, memento mori, to remind them that they are mortal.
What this does is bring them back to reality and remind them that, at the end of the day, they are human. Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow?
What people can take from this in today’s time period is the fact that life is still short for us, and the reality is we as humans still manage to take advantage of time. We find ourselves getting very comfortable, whether we notice that or not. We live in a comfortable state, and we don’t act on things we say we want to do.
We push it for later, and who knows how long “later” will be?
Although it seems dark, it’s good to think about how death is around the corner so we’re not wasting our time here. We should spend every moment as if we died tomorrow we will be happy with the decisions of today.