There is perhaps only one universal truth – one that exists outside of race, religion or sex – we will all eventually die. But despite this grim premise, memento mori, latin for remember you must die, is rarely used as a fearmongering tool, but often ironically intertwined with memento vivere, or remember to live.

For the stoics, a life guided by death was critical for cultivating clarity in life. As Seneca urged in Moral Letters to Lucilius: “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day…The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”

One exercise for living a life guided by memento mori is the Eulogy Exercise. Essentially, it has three questions:

1. If you were killed tomorrow, what would someone write as a eulogy for the life you have lived?

2. If, for the next 40 years you lived a life full of the qualities that you valued, and became the person you wanted to be, what would somebody write for your eulogy then?

3. If there is a difference, what stands in the way of your life moving towards closer to eulogy #2?

We all live with a dissonance between the person we are today and the person we could be if we dared strongly enough. This exercise clarifies this degree of dissonance, acting as spiritual windscreen wipers of sorts, and simultaneously challenges us to be better. It is designed to be uncomfortable, for as Alain de Botton wrote, “In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.”

Yet simultaneously, the eulogy exercise is quietly encouraging, for the nudging question slowly but inevitably arises:

What is it worth to live a life like your second eulogy?