COVID-19 as Memento Mori
In the early 16th-century, there was an explosion of paintings that depicted skulls. Some art historians believe this was a response to the Renaissance portraits of the day that showed the wealthy dripping with jewels and draped with sumptuous fabrics. They were lavish in their depiction of material wealth. The skull was an artist’s cautionary tale, symbolizing the transience of this material life and material wealth.
“Remember you must die” is the loose translation of the Latin phrase, memento mori, the name for this genre of art that used symbols of death and decay. Paintings with skulls, dancing skeletons, decaying fruit, and worms reminded viewers of their mortality and were both sobering and inspiring. The value of meditating on death, however, began much earlier. Both Plato and Seneca taught the value of it and the Buddhists have their own practice of meditating on death, called maranasati. It was Christianity, though, with its focus on the afterlife in combination with its incredibly strong marketing and distribution network that brought this idea to a larger audience and gave this name to an entire genre of artwork.
In our modern Western culture where death has been hidden away, these overt symbols of death can seem morbid and grotesque but it wasn’t always perceived this way. From antiquity until relatively recently, death has always been a very public part of life, whether it was a beheading in the town square, a human sacrifice at Chichen Itza or the loud keening of public grief. Death was a reality that united us all. It offered not only an important teaching but it was also a source of emotional and spiritual gravity.
Today, we have our own memento mori and it’s not a symbol in a painting in a museum. It’s a virus with the most successful social media campaign ever run. We only have to turn on one of the many screens in front of us to see the images of death and dying that are happening in the world but these are obviously not symbolic.
Ultimately, whether it was Plato’s Phaedo or Van Gogh’s painting above, the intention of memento mori was always to remind us that this life is fleeting. Around some corner, our end awaits whether it’s this afternoon or 50 years from now. Underneath the skulls and rats is a deeper message though — to live this life to the fullest.
Today, the struggles and challenges of tens of thousands of people unfold in plain sight and are amplified by their repetition through millions of “shares” and “likes”. Online courses abound with tools, tips and practices to handle the stress, the depression, the fear and these are important. We need our teachers now to navigate this storm. This memento mori brings our mortality into full view on a global, digital, screen. And like the skulls in the Renaissance paintings, it has a deeper message for us.
Even though we may be quarantined in our homes for the time being, irritated by our loved ones in the other room or afraid of losing our loved ones who are miles away, underneath it all, we must square off with our most basic and human choice — to be fully alive or not — regardless of the circumstances.
Death is here. Life is here.
Memento Mori.
