The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
‘Things are not permanent, they don’t last, there is no final security,’ she says. What makes us miserable is not this truth, but our efforts to escape it.
To seek security is to try to remove yourself from change, and thus from the thing that defines life.
[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.
‘Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.’
You need not engage in cemetery vigils to practise memento mori, however. You can start much smaller. The psychologist Russ Harris suggests a simple exercise: imagine you are eighty years old-assuming you’re not eighty already, that is; if you are, you’ll have to pick an older age-and then complete the sentences ‘I wish I’d spent more time on … ‘, and ‘I wish I’d spent less time on … ‘.