" If I had my life over I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death … without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs. – Inspector Mortimer in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori "

― Oliver Burkeman , The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking