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Monday, December 21, 2020

Musonius Rufus, Fragments 22


It is not possible to live well today, unless one thinks of it as his last.
 
I’m too tired, so I’ll do it tomorrow. 
 
This seems broken, but I’ll fix it later. 
 
I know this is wrong, and yet it seems like so much fun. I’ll pay my dues when I’m sane and sober. 
 
I am powerless right now. Let God take care of it. 
 
My greatest regrets in life, the ones that felt like an unbearable toothache, or a splitting migraine, or a glass splinter you just can’t get out from under your skin, were the results of that kind of sloppy thinking. 
 
What has been done has been done. There is also no promise that anything else will ever be. I only have the here and now. 
 
Guilt from the past can still be fixed now, by making sincere amends. Show compassion where it was once denied. 
 
Worries about the future can already be managed now, by shining with unconditional understanding and love at this very moment. 
 
Always a sensitive soul, I worried about why fictional depictions of sudden death in books and films troubled me so much. Was it just the violence, or something about the wasted loss? 
 
When an anonymous “enemy” soldier got shot, or garroted, or knifed during a war movie, and everyone else cheered, I still felt sad. He had a mother and a father, and twenty or thirty years of growth were just snuffed out in an agonizing instant.
 
Exactly. That was what bothered me the most. Isn’t that terribly unfair? 
 
It will only be unfair if I am not prepared, as Musonius suggests. This day, this minute, must be handled as if it were the only one I will ever have. Nothing else is guaranteed. 



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