Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14

Though you should be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same.

For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future, for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him?

These two things then you must bear in mind: the first, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time.

The second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2 (tr Long)

We sometimes struggle with arguments like this one, perhaps because of what seems to be a web of words, but I suspect it is most often because we think about a question too abstractly, and do not ground it sufficiently in the concrete act of living. By all means, consider time through the means of mathematics and physics, but do not neglect to also consider it from the immediate perspective of human experience.

We speak of our awareness of time in terms of the past, the present, and the future, of what was, of what is, and of what will be. The past is held in my memory, the present is what I am experiencing now, and the future lies in my expectation. Now these three are in relation to one another, but which can I truly say exists in the fullest sense? Only the present is, because the past is no more, and the future has not yet come to pass.

In this light, I should therefore remember that it is the now that I am actually living, and that I possess for myself. Even the present itself has no quantity, but is a constant process of coming and going, and it offers the same quality to all of us. It will make no difference how long I have already lived, or how much longer I am going to live, because the Stoic measure of my life, of that which is within my power to decide, can be said to exist in its totality and completeness at any given moment.

I should never neglect my awareness of the past or of the future, but my estimation of them must always be ordered toward how well I am living. Think of how often we destroy the good now from hopes and fears about the past and the future. If I have lived poorly before, I can change that right now, and I should hardly live poorly now because of what may or may not still unfold.

The past is something I can learn from, and the future is something I can plan for, but no change in the quantity of either will matter if I do not strive for quality right here and now. Carpe diem.

Everything comes around, and Nature always offers the same order, and the same opportunities, whether through a larger or a smaller orbit. A long or a short life is in not in itself a blessing or a curse, because living is in itself complete.

For myself, pain from the past can often tempt me into despair, and all the metaphysics aside, Stoicism offers a very practical solution. The only thing I can really lose is right now, and it is ironic that only I am able to throw away the chance of that immediate moment, out of a worry for something that no longer exists. I end up foolishly abandoning what I do have for what I no longer have. It is only by rightly reordering my attention on what is or is not mine that I can make the most of my time. 

Written in 9/2004

Image: Nicolas Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time (c. 1634-1636)