Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.28

Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings that move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

It is easier for many of us to see the negative, to recognize the bad in something long before discerning anything good. We may, in fact, be deliberately looking out for the things we can complain about, while ignoring the things we can appreciate.

The Stoic recognizes, however, that the good or the bad in our lives will depend entirely upon how we make use of our circumstances. I can, if only I so choose, resist the temptation to dwell upon the doom and gloom. I can deliberately attend to what will bring benefit instead of harm. There is a certain satisfaction in being able to “turn” a situation, having altered nothing about the conditions themselves, but having altered everything about my estimation of them.

Death, for example, will tend to immediately make us uncomfortable. It is a necessary component of life, and we seem to be quite ready to portray it regularly in news and entertainment, but there is certain awkward hush when it stands directly in front of us. We formulaically offer our mumbled regrets and prayers, look around nervously, and hope it will just all go away. It is the end of things, after all, and we don’t like to think of ourselves ceasing to be.

Regardless of whether we think of death as the erasing of self or the transformation of self, I need not consider only what is lost, but I can also consider what is gained.

Nothing, in the Stoic sense, ever completely ends at all. It changes into something else, and I can rest assured that I am playing my own necessary part in the unfolding of Nature. I can also find peace in knowing that those very things I found so troublesome and frustrating in this life, the ones that often seemed such a burden, will now be lifted from me.

Marcus Aurelius tells us exactly what those apparent hindrances have been, and reminds us that we will now be free of them.

I will be free of the senses, which can have a way of assaulting me with waves of confusing and disturbing images.

I will be free of pain, which can leave me weak and cast down, just as much as I will be free of pleasure, which can leave me enslaved to desire.

I will be free of the thinking that can be so befuddled, uncertain, and unclear, stumbling about here and there, unsure of where I have come from and where I am going.

I will be free of the demands of the body, those ridiculous needs that always required so much my plodding effort and routine.

I should never allow worry to consume me in this life, of course, but death can be said to allow me to no longer have to attend to that pesky temptation of worry. Understood rightly, it is hardly silly to say that it all depends on how I look at it.

There was a good reason Socrates suggested in the Phaedo that we can think of death not as the ending of what is pleasant, but as being liberated from what is unpleasant. Whatever may become of me, it will at the very least be a change into something completely new.

Written in 3/2007

IMAGE: Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates (1787)