How I Actually Engage Mortality Awareness in Ordinary Life (And What It Has Me Doing)

If you read the first post in this series, you know that mortality awareness - the practice of genuinely sitting with your own finitude - is less about confronting death and more about getting clear on life. The lit match in the dark cave. Orientation, not morbidity.

But I've noticed that people hear that and nod, and then don't quite know what to do with it. It sounds meaningful in theory. The question is what it actually looks like when you close the browser tab and go back to your day.

So here's the honest version. Here's what this practice looks like in my actual life, on an ordinary week, without any special occasion prompting it.

Some days it's a question I sit with in the morning - not as some big dramatic thing, just a quiet check-in. Something like: is what I'm about to spend today on something I'd still choose if I were paying closer attention? Usually the answer is yes. Sometimes it's a useful no.

Some days it looks like a note on my whiteboard. A reminder I put there myself because I know I'll walk past it fifteen times and it'll catch me at the right moment. Something that keeps the awareness warm without requiring me to stop and do anything formal.

And some days - honestly, more than I used to - it looks like actually doing the things I've been putting off because they live in the uncomfortable territory of acknowledging that I'm going to die and so are the people I love.

That means things like getting our wills done. Not talking about getting our wills done - actually doing it. It means working on what I think of as an ICE book - In Case of Emergency - a place where the practical information my family would need actually lives, instead of scattered across my brain and three different email accounts. It means writing letters. The kind I'd want my people to have, that say the things I mean to say but keep assuming I'll have time to say later. It means building a playlist - which sounds lighter than it is, because a playlist for your own memorial is a surprisingly clarifying thing to sit down and make.

None of this is morbid when you're actually doing it. That's the thing that always surprises people. The anticipation is heavier than the practice. Once you're in it, there's something that feels a lot like love - and a lot like relief.

I've talked about this elsewhere on the blog - including an unexpected angle on mortality awareness and anxiety that might resonate if you're someone who catastrophizes about the future - but the practical dimension is what I want to stay with here, because it's the part that tends to get skipped in conversations about this topic.

Most writing about mortality awareness stays at the philosophical level. Memento mori. Be present. Live fully. That's real, and it matters. But there's a gap between the insight and the Tuesday afternoon when you're avoiding the tab you need to open to make an appointment with an estate attorney.

Mortality awareness, as I practice it, is what closes that gap. Not by making the avoidance go away - it doesn't, entirely - but by changing what the avoidance costs. When I'm actually working with the awareness that time here is finite, the discomfort of doing the hard thing starts to feel smaller than the discomfort of not doing it. That's a shift worth having.

If you're wondering what all of this has to do with the flatness or the stuckness or the sense that you've been circling something important without landing - that's exactly what the work I do with women is about. The connection between mortality awareness and the particular kind of inertia that shows up in midlife is something I explore in depth through the offerings at the Apothecary. A private consultation is often where women start if they want to work with this directly - you can find that here. And if you've been putting off the practical end-of-life preparation - the letters, the instructions, the things your people would need - that's the heart of Final Messages for Those You Love, a live cohort I run specifically for that work.

But you don't have to start there. You can start with the question I left at the end of the first post. You can start with the whiteboard. You can start with ten minutes and the letter you've been meaning to write for two years.

The practice doesn't require a ceremony. It just requires a little honesty and a willingness to let that honesty inform how you spend the next hour.

That's enough to begin.

~angel

If you're carrying some resistance to this - some version of "I know this is real but I really don't want to go there" - the third post in this series is the one for you. [You can find it here.]