A Gate to Momentary Mortality

Morii n. A desire to capture the feeling of a moment or experience—a snapshot of a moment, like a vibrant acknowledgement that something has changed, and yet is almost impossible to convey to another in photos or through recollection. From 'memento mori,' a small reminder of your mortality and ‘torii,’ the traditional Japanese gates that mark the threshold between the profane and the sacred.

The above definition is drawn from the site: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows—a personal favorite of mine—and it is a feeling I think we all experience as we start a new year, a new decade. Morii is like a fleeting awareness that the moment we are standing in is different, and special, and yet there is a frustration there because we know that we will be the only one to ever experience that moment, in that way. To me it is a feeling that paradoxically profound and frustrating, as if we are both connected with something deeper and profoundly alone.

So often in our world are we quick to grab our cameras, those devices that are so ubiquitous in our lives that they hang around us like albatrosses. How often do people live their lives through the lens of their digital devices, capturing moments so as to construct an identity that can be shared and envied by others. Yet how often do we put the cameras aside and enjoy the moments of Morii, and accept that the images and experiences we are witness to are wholly our own, and will always be that. Marriage proposals have become Instagram moments, instead of intimate moments. Vacations become Facebook memories instead of memories among friends. We have this urge to capture and contain our lives, not just for our enjoyment but for the observation of others, as if to say “this is me, now love me/hate me/envy me.”

Unfortunately, Morii shows us that those moments cannot ever be fully captured, at least not as we wish. Our pictures may remind of the scene, but can they ever really help us revisit what it was to stand in that place and at that time, with love, with awe, with friendship, with pity, with majesty, or so many other unspoken and ill defined emotions that no picture or moving image on a phone will ever do your own experience justice. Perhaps that is why it is easier to mindlessly grab for our phones and capture an image. Perhaps living through the lens is preferable to having a sense or Morii, an understanding that you are—for the briefest of moments— standing in a place, in a time, in a version of you that will never come again.

A torii is a traditional Japanese gate—the exact kind you are picturing when I say “Japanese gate.” They are usually located at the entrance to Shinto shrines, and mark a point of transition from the mundane to the divine. Momento mori, literaly translates from Latin as “'remember that you must die.” In a way, everyday we pass through gates of change, gates that mark our experiences as moving from the mundane to the divine, and yet we may let them go by unacknowledged. Additionally, everyday we die in many different ways, or at least versions of us die, experiences we have die. These things never come again, and we if stop too long to consider that then we are reminded of the fleeting nature of life. After all, we are mortal, and in that mortality we find beauty and awe and excitement and an understanding of ourselves and the world around us that can be both profoundly terrifying and deeply connective.

So, maybe for this year, try putting down your phone once in a while and relish the idea that this moment will never come again.