Seneca, Moral Letters 22.7

I was just putting the seal upon this letter; but it must be broken again, in order that it may go to you with its customary contribution, bearing with it some noble word. And lo, here is one that occurs to my mind; I do not know whether its truth or its nobility of utterance is the greater. "Spoken by whom?" you ask. By Epicurus; for I am still appropriating other men's belongings.

 

The words are: "Everyone goes out of life just as if he had but lately entered it." 

Take anyone off his guard—young, old, or middle-aged; you will find that all are equally afraid of death, and equally ignorant of life. No one has anything finished, because we have kept putting off into the future all our undertakings. No thought in the quotation given above pleases me more than that it taunts old men with being infants. 

 

"No one," he says, "leaves this world in a different manner from one who has just been born." That is not true; for we are worse when we die than when we were born; but it is our fault, and not that of Nature. 

 

Nature should scold us, saying: "What does this mean? I brought you into the world without desires or fears, free from superstition, treachery, and the other curses. Go forth as you were when you entered!" 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 22

 

I think of my mother, way back when I was in the second grade. I had already walked out the door for school, and she came running down the path after me to put a little bag of candied orange peels, an old Austrian delicacy, into my lunchbox. So Seneca reopens the letter, out of a deep love for his friend, to include the usual Epicurean saying. 

 

Here is a wonderful insight, as Seneca finds both a profound truth and a troublesome way it could be misinterpreted. I simultaneously appreciate its force and its subtlety. 

 

Yes, death is the great equalizer, in the sense that it makes light of all our vanities, our presumption that collecting all sorts of trinkets, or surrounding ourselves with a troop of followers, will make any sort of difference. 

 

Why do we even fear death? Our extinction, after all, is a vary part of the coming and going that rightly balances existence. What we fear is rather the horror of going out dissatisfied, still crying for more; we are acutely aware that we haven’t finished the job. 

 

But no, we do not necessarily die in the same moral state as we came in—we too often die in a far worse state than we came in. 

 

What did Nature give to each one of us? A mind to be open, a heart to reach out, a freedom from hatred and prejudices, an opportunity to be a creature of joy. 

 

What do we then do with these gifts? We refuse to reflect, we grow cold and insensitive, we get bogged down in tribalism, and we accordingly suffer in misery. 

 

It is never too early to reconsider the path I am following. Let me pass on in harmony with the dignity that God gave me. 

—Reflection written in 9/2012