Seneca, Moral Letters 24.6

"Why dost thou hold up before my eyes swords, fires, and a throng of executioners raging about thee? Take away all that vain show, behind which thou lurkest and scarest fools! Ah! thou art naught but Death, whom only yesterday a manservant of mine and a maid-servant did despise!

 

“Why dost thou again unfold and spread before me, with all that great display, the whip and the rack? Why are those engines of torture made ready, one for each several member of the body, and all the other innumerable machines for tearing a man apart piecemeal? 

 

“Away with all such stuff, which makes us numb with terror! And thou, silence the groans, the cries, and the bitter shrieks ground out of the victim as he is torn on the rack! 

 

“Forsooth thou are naught but Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee; short thou art if I cannot bear thee!"

 

Ponder these words which you have often heard and often uttered. Moreover, prove by the result whether that which you have heard and uttered is true. For there is a very disgraceful charge often brought against our school—that we deal with the words, and not with the deeds, of philosophy. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 24

 

As I grow older, I seem to talk to myself more often, and that could either be a harmless effect of aging or a warning that my eccentricity is shifting into madness, but I do often find it helpful to work out a problem in the form of an internal conversation. 

 

I take comfort in the fact that this can be a perfectly acceptable literary device, the apostrophe, where a character turns away and addresses either the audience, or someone who is absent, or a personification of an object or concept. I may, for example, seek guidance from Justice, or ask questions of Fate, or challenge the power of Death: 

 

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

 

I am not expecting a reply, though the process offers some much-needed structure to my musings. 

 

Death has a power over my body, and it can determine how long my awareness in this life may continue, but it has absolutely no power over what I choose to think and how I choose to act. 

 

Death will not trip me up in this regard; only my imagined fear of death’s reach can drag me down. By rightly understanding the purpose of this life, I can banish an anxiety about the end of my existence, just as I can rise above the force of any worldly circumstances. 

 

The apostrophe offered by Seneca is like a good fight song for the soul, and when I read something so stirring and defiant, I think of the wonderful scene in Casablanca where the bar patrons sing La Marseillaise to drown out those pesky Germans. 

 

On a less refined level, I sometimes sing the theme song from Malcolm in the Middle to myself when my courage wavers: 

 

You’re not the boss of me now and you’re not so big! 

 

There is little point in messing about with my own inadequate words when a great poet can help me to express what I am thinking. Thank you, John Donne: 

 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

—Reflection written in 10/2012 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEJHJ_WfNgU