Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.49

If any god told you that you would die tomorrow, or certainly on the day after tomorrow, you would not care much whether it was on the third day or tomorrow, unless you were in the highest degree mean-spirited.

For how small is the difference? So think it no great thing to die after as many years as you can name, rather than tomorrow.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

After years of ever worsening chest pains, shortness of breath, terrible exhaustion, and then finally sudden unpredictable bouts of passing out, I was advised that I had perhaps six months to live.

My heart, they said, after all the fancy tests, was just failing. Various hugely expensive surgical options were suggested, of course, all of which involved ripping me open, putting me under for many months, and all of them with absolutely no guarantee of doing anything at all.

I think, perhaps for the first time in my life, I actually managed to show even a little bit of courage. Thank you, I said. Please give me whatever you can to make it easier, and to make the end come more smoothly, but I’m not going to try to extend my meager life in quantity, at the expense if its quality.

I know that choice is not for everyone, but I made my own choice based on Stoic principles. I would rather live well, with whatever little time is given to me, than lie there having been chopped up like a piece of meat, with tubes in me, numbed by drugs that cloud my thinking, a faceless number in a sterile hospital room. Whatever will come, will come, but I will not choose to die to the chirping of machines, covered in plastic. I’d rather die with the chirping of birds, surrounded by fresh air.

And here I am, now over two years later, still alive. The esteemed doctors squirm when I show up for a renewal on my prescriptions. I know it could end at any moment, and I no longer have any fear of that. Perhaps it is just my tough Irish constitution, or the fact that I am just generally a stubborn bastard. None of that matters.

I do know it will end sooner rather than later. It no longer troubles me. I at least suspect it will end quickly, and quite unexpectedly, whenever it happens, and though there are things I will miss most terribly, I hope that I will have done my part.

I learned that I needed to come to terms with who I am, not how long I have happened to be here. We are always told, by the big moneymaking machine, to invest in our future. I realized there is nothing more important than investing in my present.

It hasn’t been an easy path. The physical pain is far outweighed by the way the situation makes the Black Dog bite me emotionally all the more. There are times I will want to surrender completely. I even developed a little mantra for myself, whenever I went to bed in a very foul mood:

Close your eyes. Fall asleep. Don’t wake up.

I was saddened by how few people showed any concern at all, but that was itself the test that Providence offered to me. It has helped me to rely on my own thinking, and to recognize when there is actually compassionate thinking in others, however few those others might be.

How much? Meaningless.

How well? Priceless.

Not how a credit card company means it, but how a genuine Stoic means it. Our currencies are rather different.

Written in 12/2016

A chirping bird, not a chirping machine. . .