NB Apparel Memento Mori Burn Brightly Shirt

Time Is Limited - Burn Brightly [Memento Mori]

This Year's Black Friday Shirt: Time Is Limited, Burn Brightly ⌛️💀🕯️

Every year we do a limited edition—limited time ⌛️ (get it?)—shirt… which got me thinking. Things that say limited time aren’t quite correct because your time is always limited.

There’s a concept called ‘Memento Mori’ (Latin for 'remember that you [have to] die') that dates at least back to Socrates, perhaps even earlier. There was an ancient Egyptian custom of bringing out a skeleton during festivities to remind the partygoers that they should “drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this.”

This of course sounds awful until you realize that it is in fact an INVERSION of this seemingly macabre tradition; it is a celebration of the life you do have, a reminder that your time is precious and it isn’t guaranteed. It is a way to free yourself from all the misspent ‘tomorrows’ and ‘laters’ and ‘one days’ and an admonishment to to not postpone anything important that could be done now because, as Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Or, as I have styled it:
Time Is Limited ⌛️
Burn Brightly 🕯️

For a long time, I (@timgritzman) carried a Memento Mori coin with me. It still sits on my desk today. I try to look at it when I get frustrated or dissatisfied or short on patience. I’ve created for you here a shirt you can wear as a reminder you can cloak yourself in, in the gym or about your daily life. I hope you like it as much as I do.