MORTALITY & MEANING
Most people go through life avoiding thoughts of this inevitable event; philosophers argue confronting it early actually helps you live better.
What is death?
Psychologists generally agree that suppressing this type of emotion long-term causes more harm than expressing it.
What is negative emotion / grief / sadness?
Many philosophers distinguish between values a person absorbs passively from society and values they do this instead.
What is choosing/creating for themselves?
Many philosophical traditions agree this — not money or achievement — is the primary source of a meaningful life.
What is love/relationships/connection?
This ancient phrase translates to a phrase meaning: "remember you must die".
What is "memento mori"?
This term describes intentionally setting aside time to fully feel an emotion, rather than avoiding or being consumed by it.
What is emotional processing / a "grief practice"?
This term describes the pressure to define success through wealth, status, and achievement rather than personal fulfillment.
What is materialism / consumerism?
This term describes what a person leaves behind, ideas, relationships, impact after they die.
What is legacy?
This term describes the unease people feel when they confront their own mortality, a concept explored heavily in existentialist philosophy.
What is death anxiety / existential dread?
Stoic philosophy teaches that we shouldn't try to eliminate this, but rather change our relationship to it.
What is suffering?
Existentialist philosophy argues that meaning isn't discovered, but this instead.
What is created/constructed?
his term describes the practice of being fully engaged and attentive in your interactions with others, rather than distracted.
What is presence / mindfulness?
Philosophers who argue we should embrace mortality (rather than fear it) often claim doing so has this positive effect on how we spend our remaining time.
What is living more intentionally/meaningfully?
This term describes the philosophical idea that vulnerability, not strength, is often the path to real connection with others.
What is emotional openness/vulnerability?
This term describes rejecting mainstream cultural narratives in favor of a self-authored set of values and priorities.
What is nonconformity/authenticity?
Philosophers distinguish between living for public image and living for this instead.
What is authentic/private self?
This paradox suggests that fully accepting death is what allows a person to be fully alive.
What is "learning to die is learning to live" / the death-life paradox?
Brene Brown and other researchers argue this, not sadness, is actually the most difficult emotion for people to sit with.
What is shame/vulnerability?
This famous concept from Aristotle refers to a life of flourishing based on virtue, not pleasure or wealth.
What is eudaimonia?
This concept suggests that by teaching or helping others, a person can continue to exist in some form after death.
What is "living on through others" / symbolic immortality?