memento vivere, remember you are here.
memento vivere means remember to live.
which is funny, because the phrase people usually say is memento mori, remember you must die. very dramatic, and honestly, for a long time, i might have been carrying that around.
i found memento vivere on tiktok a while ago. the fact that i found it on there is embarrassing - but also very on brand for me. but since then, it sat with me, and i only just realized, why. i have spent so much time being afraid of death that i forgot there was another half of the sentence. not just: you are going to die ‘memento mori’. but also: you are alive right now.
right before artemis ii took off, my death anxiety had been sitting in my passenger seat, backseatdriving. not always loud, but always there. this constant little background process running in my body. like i had an expiration date, and the not-knowing was somehow worse than the knowing would have been.
but then the mission happened, which then made me watch interviews with the crew to escape the gaping whole the end of their journey left in me. something in the way Christina Koch talked about both her life and job as an astronaut and mission specialist, made the fear loosen its grip. i don’t think fear like that just evaporates. but it stopped being the whole room.
her saying life is long, and you need to do what fulfills you, gave me a sense that the whole point of life was not to conquer the unknown, but to remain curious inside it. to look at something enormous, that makes you feel small, and not immediately translate it into doom. to let awe be bigger than panic.
i still get scared. the universe is still fucking big. and death is still the ending of my part in it. the fact that we are all just little nervous mammals walking around on a rock, doom-scrolling on tiktok and wondering what everyone thinks of us, is still insane to me.
but lately, when i think about how small i am, it doesn’t only make me feel doomed. sometimes it makes me feel free. and that is something Christina Koch gave me.
my existence is so tiny in the big, impossible whole, so maybe i do not have to spend all of it bracing for impact. maybe i can use the time i have to look around. to learn things. to get the most out of what the world has to give me, as possible.
yesterday my mom said the infinite, unknowable part of the universe scared her. i understood that. of course i did. there is a kind of terror in not being able to explain everything. in knowing there are questions too large for your body to hold.
but in one of the interviews, one of the astronauts said something like that it is okay to be okay with knowing that not everything can be explained.
i keep thinking about that in relation to what my mom told me.
maybe that is what i am trying to practice - like finding the ability to stand in front of the enormous thing and not run away from it. but to accept that i will never now.
funnily enough, i told my mom that something that helps me with this fear, is thinking of life like minecraft, which sounds stupid, but bare with me. i think the reason i love that game is because the world is endless. you could walk in one direction forever and there would always be more. another biome. another cave. another weird little mountain. another place to build a house and fill it with torches so zombies wouldnt get in.
i think that is what i want life to feel like. i want to feel like an explorer, in a small way, by asking the right questions. questions that make it feel like i am always willing to have an ekstra look and investigate.
artemis II gave me that, i think. or reminded me that i used to have it. that childlike feeling of there being more. not just more to fear, but more to find. so maybe that is what the mission is for me now.
not something to defeat death anxiety with. or an allusion to be obsessed with some enlightened humble trailblazer-woman with nice biceps, who loves all tings that make her feel small (& looks really good in a backwards cap).
to let the unknown be a doorway sometimes.
to stop treating my life like evidence of an ending and start treating it like an invitation.
memento vivere, remember you are here.
