The topics of death and dying are generally regarded as unpleasant in our society. We do not bring it up at dinner parties or other social gatherings, as discussing death is viewed to be uncouth. If someone mentions another’s death, other people in the room likely utter some version of, “Oh, that’s terrible,” then quickly change the subject. If someone has questions about how another person died, they are viewed as insensitive. Worse yet is talking about your own death; it is categorically morbid.

Mortality is “the state of being subject to death,” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. Put simply, it is our awareness of our human existence. This awareness of our existence activates a reflex to stave death off as long as possible. We revel in ongoing illusions of immortality, which range from anti-aging serums and Botox injections, to efforts to download a person’s brain so they can continue to live virtually, to cryonics (the practice of using temperatures so cold that a person can be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health). Death is our common foe to defy and defeat.

On a deeper level, death is a “rich metaphysical stew combining elements of philosophy, psychology, religion, anthropology, and sociology,” notes Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D in his essay, “Death, American Style.” That is to say, thinking about death is complicated and remains a major problem to reconcile with for most of us. Yet, everyone will confront death at some point; it is an unavoidable part of life. There is a Latin phrase, Memento mori, which translates to “remember you must die.” Memento mori also refers to an ancient practice on the contemplation of mortality dating back to Socrates. The phrase is associated with skulls, hourglasses, and wilting flowers, which may register to us as macabre, but in earlier centuries people would place these death tokens on desks and bookshelves to keep the idea of death always in mind. Think of the Victorians, whose era is significantly marked by frequent death due to disease like tuberculosis, poor living conditions, and lack of access to healthcare for the general population. As a result, the Victorians embraced, and oftentimes even romanticized, death. They encouraged maintaining close proximity to the dying – the deathbed became a focal point for families in the process of losing a loved one. The Victorians’ heads-on approach to death is also reflected in art and writing of the time, like how Charles Dickens devoted numerous chapters from his novels to prolonged deathbed watches.

Today, many other cultures around the world do not shy away from death and dying like we do. In some societies outside of the United States, mortality is greatly accepted, and people prepare for death a majority of their life. Among Hylomo Buddhists in Nepal, dying is deemed a complex art to be understood and learned, one that requires forethought and self-cognizance to safeguard passage into the next life. By placing valued objects like jewelry or other relics of meaning on a dying person’s chest, relatives help the dying detach their desire for material possessions from the world so they can continue on in the post-Earthside plane of existence in peace. Other societies integrate death and dying as subjects of daily conversation, like the Korowai, a group of people in West Papua, Indonesia. Instead of viewing death as a looming event that comes to claim a person, the Korowai people “speak […] of themselves as being in the process of dying.” They integrate death as a presence that occurs simultaneous with living, according to anthropologist Rupert Stasch in “Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place.”

Returning to our own society’s anxieties about mortality, a 2016 study of college students at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts revealed that studying and talking about death through reading obituaries and bereavement cards, filling out mock advance directives, and walking through cemeteries brought relief to many of the students’ worry and fear about death. The group of students reviewed the ways in which other cultures grapple with mortality, like the Hylomo Buddhists and Korowai mentioned above, resulting in an awareness that there are a multitude of possible reactions to the frailty and finitude of human existence. They found that having discussions about death openly and through a cross-cultural framework helped them accept that death is an integral part of life.

Indeed, while we might not want to acknowledge it, death is woven into the tapestry of our lives, especially during some of our most memorable moments. A good number of our formative moments involve the loss of a loved one, or those that make us feel nearly invincible (the time we skydived or hiked challenging terrain), or are exceedingly celebratory (graduations, weddings, anniversaries, extravagant vacations, and career successes). These events, whether the ones we laude as some of the “best days of our lives,” or some of the worst days wading through grief, affix themselves to us for the remainder of our time on Earth. It makes sense, then, that the notion that our lives are fleeting and subject to finitude can conjure dual feelings of fear and gratitude.

Still, research demonstrates that thinking about death can be a good thing. Researchers argue that cultivating attitudes to death that are consistent with Stoic philosophy, an ancient philosophy originating in Greece, has the potential to guide and improve Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (“CBT”, a method of psychological treatment) for fears of death. One of the key aspects of Stoicism is the recognition of oneself as “accountable only for what is subject to [one’s] control.” The message here is that we should seek indifference to things outside of our control, especially tragedies or unwanted circumstances, especially death. The concept of indifference to death stems in large part from acceptance of death as natural and universal. Marcus Aurelius, a prominent Stoic philosopher, remarked, “Do not despise death […] welcome it, rather, as one further part of nature’s will.” The Stoics argued that if death is merely part of “nature’s will,” it makes no more sense to fear it than it does to fear “falling of leaves of autumn, or new growth in spring.” Death, therefore, is a precondition for life; life without death is impossible. The Stoics also believed that the indifference and acceptance of death is key to creating a joyful life. By truly accepting death, we free ourselves from fear.

Understandably, it is not easy for everyone to develop a strong indifference to death and the advent of tragedy. Anxiety is real and can be debilitating for many. We cannot deny that we will die someday, though, so how are we to prevent this truth from paralyzing us? As mentioned earlier, CBT is a common therapeutic modality to treat anxiety in patients. CBT treatments often involve efforts to change patients’ behavioral patterns through strategies like facing fears instead of avoiding them. For example, someone with severe anxiety about their mortality may be asked to write their own obituary as a way to confront their fears. Even more so, a near-death experience encourages us to take stock of our own life in a good way. This is the effect many therapists rely on as they try to help clients confront mortality and shift perspectives on life onto a more meaningful path. The shift focuses on decreasing value placed on extrinsic goals, like material success, toward intrinsic ones, like relationships.

In a 2007 study, Emily L. B. Lykins and her colleagues questioned staff at a California medical center two to three weeks after a 1994 earthquake. Staff were asked to rate the importance of sixteen different goals both currently and as they were before the earthquake. Results suggested a shift in values toward intrinsic goals such as fostering close relationships, doing creative work, and developing as a person. Interestingly, participants who previously had a strong fear they were going to die in the earthquake were more likely to indicate a shift from extrinsic to intrinsic goals.

It works the other way around, too. People who pursue and value intrinsic goals have more success in staving off anxiety associated with death than those who chase material things. Researchers Alain Van Hiel and Maarten Vansteenkiste of Ghent University in Belgium published a survey they conducted on goal identity in older adults. The elders who reported having fulfilled more of their intrinsic goals were the least anxious about death and most satisfied with their life. In contrast, respondents who reported the greatest attainment of extrinsic goals indicated the most despair and the least acceptance of death.

Knowing that a focus on intrinsic goals can alleviate some of our anxieties about mortality is helpful, but are we overestimating the time we are granted to live? And as a result, do we end up not championing the moments that, when tallied up upon review at the end of our life, truly matter? Clinical psychologist, researcher, and writer Nathan Greene hints at this concept that we do not always take sufficient stock of what matters through his personal experience with his mother’s terminal illness. He discusses his experiences with developing gratitude as a result of watching his mother die in the essay, “Can Losing a Loved One Make You More Grateful?” Greene recalls a summer day in which he and his sister took their mother to an overlook in Laguna Beach. Greene, his mother, and sister stood hand in hand feeling the sun warm their skin, noting that “[i]n moments like this […] it becomes glaringly obvious that our time here is so finite and death can come at any moment.”

Greene’s personal experience inspired his academic research to question whether developing gratitude through loss is universal. His research led him to a study that demonstrates humans’ sense of gratitude can increase when we reflect on our mortality. The researchers of that study attributed the phenomenon to what is called “scarcity heuristic” in psychology, the idea that we value things more when they are rare or scarce. When we experience those exceedingly happy moments mentioned above, we associate them with being scarce. And they usually are. Most people only experience those types of moments a handful of times throughout their lives. Similarly, experiencing grief or loss has the same effect as the special moments to our thoughts on mortality – we realize that life is short, and each moment thereafter becomes incredibly important. The idea that once we have experienced a couple of special moments or situations of grief or loss in which we then view our own lives through the lens of scarcity lends itself to gratitude and lauding the everyday moments we never noticed before. Ask almost anyone who has experienced grief, and they will usually tell you that it snapped into focus their perspective on life to one of not taking the “little” things for granted. As Greene relayed, our lives are finite, so we must learn to place value on it.

Assuming that we can accept that death is a natural part of life, thereby relieving some of our anxiety surrounding our own mortality, is there anything else we can do to lead a fulfilling life? Research clearly supports championing the mundane moments. Psychological scientist and Harvard Business School researcher, Ting Zhang, argues that we should pay more attention to the ordinary moments because they might be more important than the extraordinary ones. Zhang and colleagues noted that we typically document the extraordinary moments in our lives by taking pictures, writing in journals, and holding onto mementos. Yet, we overlook documenting the everyday moments, like conversations with friends or cooking dinner with loved ones. We regularly make errors in trying to predict how we will feel about something and how much we will remember from that moment later on. That is why a lot of people will recall those big life events – their wedding or graduation from college – as going by in a blur, failing to remember many of the details of the day.

Let us consider one study in which researchers asked 135 college students to create time capsules at the beginning of summer. The students wrote about different experiences they recently had, such as the last social event they attended, three songs they were currently listening to, a recent conversation, and an excerpt from a final paper they had written. The students were then asked to predict how surprised they would be to read about each memory later on and how meaningful they would find it. Three months later, the students opened their time capsules and rated the memories again. The results demonstrated that the students had significantly underestimated their curiosity and interest in the time capsules. Notably, these findings were echoed in a second online study. Zhang went on to further note that we find much “joy in rediscovering a music playlist from months ago or an old joke with a neighbor,” despite these moments not seeming particularly memorable at the time. The studies conducted on this topic emphasize the significance of appreciating our daily actions and documenting the ordinary moments to give our future selves the joy of rediscovering them.

This is not an argument that we need to document everything we do in order to maximize enjoyment with our lives, though. Attempting to get just the right shot of a moment between you and your friend at a swanky restaurant can interrupt the present moment and detract from the overall experience. Zhang says that additional research is needed to discover where the middle ground lies between appreciating the present and documenting it for enjoyment in the future. Similarly, we must be careful to not tiptoe into obsessing about death and dying `a la Queen Victoria, whose excessive mourning practices resulted in forty years of rituals consisting of a wardrobe of only black and having her deceased husband’s clothes and shaving supplies set out each day.

So, if we know that appreciating the mundane moments in our daily lives is more important than focusing on achieving the “big” ones, how do we actually do so? Psychologists and philosophers advocate for what is called “experiential appreciation.” Experiential appreciation is reflected in moments like appreciating the scenery atop a hill during a hike, or noticing the first flowers bloom after a long winter. The phenomenon echoes the feeling of a deep connection to events as they transpire and the ability to extract value from them. Researchers Joshua Hicks and Frank Martela set out to understand this type of appreciation in a series of studies published in Nature Human Behavior that involved more than 3,000 participants. They questioned whether experiential appreciation is a contributor to meaningfulness and not just a product of other variables, such as coherence, purpose, and existential mattering. An initial test had participants rate their endorsement of different coping strategies to relieve their stress, finding that people who managed stress by honing in on appreciation for life and finding beauty in the everyday also reported experiencing life as highly meaningful. The next study involved participants rating the extent to which they agreed with various statements such as “I have a great appreciation for the beauty of life,” and “I appreciate a wide variety of experiences.” The results of this study reflected that the more people state that they appreciate life and life experiences, the more inclined they were to believe their existence was valuable. In subsequent studies, they further explored the connection between these concepts. For example, participants asked to recall the most meaningful event of the past week generally reported high experiential appreciation in those moments. Finally, Hicks and Martela conducted a series of experiments giving people specific tasks and asked them to relay how strongly they identified with statements linked to purpose. In one case, they found that people who watched awe-inspiring videos, like the opening of a Planet Earth documentary, reported a greater sense of meaning in life versus people who watched instructional videos on how to complete a woodworking task. Hicks and Martela’s research confirmed their theory that appreciating small things can make life feel more meaningful.

But applying the concept of experiential appreciation can be difficult. Our modern, fast-paced, project-oriented lifestyles fill the day with productivity targets and goals. We are on the go, and we attempt to maximize output both at work and at play. Rushing around from one task to another, head down looking at our phones, we tend to barely notice the world around us. Yet, life happens in the present moment. The reality is that the majority of our lives are an amalgamation of the mundane with scatterings of the “big” moments. In truth, our lives are a collection of all the moments that happen in between the most memorable ones. There is excitement along the way, to be sure, like buying your first home or taking the trip to Bali you planned and saved tirelessly for years, but the mundane moments fill in the blank pages of our life’s story and shape who we are. Like a children’s adventure book, the full story encapsulates the importance of the chapters not written but left for implicit understanding – the daily actions of eating, working, and caring for ourselves and others.

We do not have to change the world or find our one true purpose to live a fulfilling life. Embracing the significance in the everyday can look like finding magic in the way the colors change in the sky during different seasons. Every morning, the sun rises then sets, which are facts that are frankly boring, but there is beauty in the way winter sunsets are more vivid than the washed-out colors of hazy summer sunsets. Experts also suggest cultivating gratitude for the mundane by writing down three good things that happen to you each day and the role you played in them. By focusing on the small things that happened in your day, such as savoring a great cup of coffee or tea, or noticing the smile you have after watching a stranger help an elderly person cross a busy street, you begin to realize that we can all aspire to a good and meaningful life regardless of our dreams or circumstances.