Memento mori

As part of their devotions and meditations, monks are encouraged to contemplate their own mortality. The goal is to develop a perspective that runs deeper than one’s own desires and egoistic concerns. My friend Paul, showing the marks of his Jesuit education, would say “Memento mori,” throwing open first one hand, then the other, to show the “M-M” formed by the creases of the palm. In general society, we rarely give mortality a thought, at least until we begin to reach our personal “best if sold by” date. Until some inexplicable calamity intervenes, such as yesterday’s sudden bridge collapse in Minneapolis, we content ourselves with illusions of immortality. It takes a bolt from the blue to focus the mind.

I was struck this morning by the title of an article on the National Safety Council website: “What are the odds of dying?” In the case of accidental death, the odds for any individual are only 1 in 2,662/year, or 109,277 Americans, but over a lifetime the odds build up to 1 in 34--nearly half related to our love of motorized transport. But death has many tricks up his black sleeve. In 2003, 600 Americans fell from windows and roofs, 838 tripped over furniture, 47 were struck by lightning, 66 were killed by bees, 37 by dogs. 11 were laid low by fireworks, 46 lost to cave-ins; and 332 drowned in the bathtub. I’m not sure what to do with this information, unless it is to consider using scuba gear in the bath. Perhaps I’ll stare at the palms of my hands and meditate upon it for a while.