Post-Lockdown Reflection on Our Mortality: A Discussion in Y10 English

On our first day back together physically in English - Tuesday 19 May - we had a chat about what we really thought about Lockdown. Of course, we liked being able to sleep in… but once we’d agreed on that, we realised there was a lot more to say about Lockdown.

Lockdown helped us think about the meaning of life. And death.

When lockdown began, we wondered if it would ever end, and if it didn’t, what life would be like afterwards. We realised we are vulnerable, and that everybody - every single one of us - is going to die. We are mortal, whether we’re 14, or 44.

Thinking about mortality makes us question our existence, which might lead to an existential crisis. (An existential crisis is when we suddenly start wondering what the point of living really is, or even if there IS a point.) Thinking about mortality also makes us realise that our lives need to have meaning and purpose.

That’s when we talked about ‘memento mori’. It’s Latin for ‘remember death’ - it sounds grim and morbid - but really it isn’t a dark concept at all. Remembering that we are all destined to die is important. If we don’t remember that one solitary truth about life, we won’t remember to make the most of our life, and then we won’t remember to live our best life.

Lockdown taught us to look inwards, think about who we are and what we do. It taught us that the decisions we make every day are what makes us who we are, and that nothing we do, think or feel is up to anyone except ourselves. Nothing is external.

Lockdown might have been tough at times, but on reflection it helped all of us grow up just a little bit more than we would’ve, had it never happened.

At the end of the period we wrote some haiku. Here are a few for your reading pleasure:

Memento mori

Trying to live my best life

Finding a purpose

We will die sometime

We don’t know the exact date

So enjoy your time

We are all mortal

What is going to happen?

Memento mori

We remember death

The white light will carry us

Memento mori