Seneca, Moral Letters 24.8

Allow me at this point to quote a verse of yours, first suggesting that, when you wrote it, you meant it for yourself no less than for others. It is ignoble to say one thing and mean another; and how much more ignoble to write one thing and mean another! I remember one day you were handling the well-known commonplace—that we do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we die every day.

 

For every day a little of our life is taken from us; even when we are growing, our life is on the wane. 

 

We lose our childhood, then our boyhood, and then our youth. Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death.

 

It is not the last drop that empties the water clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.

 

In describing this situation, you said in your customary, style (for you are always impressive, but never more pungent than when you are putting the truth in appropriate words):

 

“Not single is the death which comes; the death

Which takes us off is but the last of all.” 

 

I prefer that you should read your own words rather than my letter; for then it will be clear to you that this death, of which we are afraid, is the last but not the only death. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 24

 

A few years ago, while I was staying at home during the summer in a grueling attempt at completing a dissertation, one of our neighbors would occasionally ask me to keep an eye on her son. 

 

I always welcomed the opportunity, not just as a relief from brooding over books with very small print, but also because the young fellow was such pleasant company. I had hardly been a typical child myself, and so it should come as no surprise that I feel great kinship with young people who are curious, reflective, and gentle. You may call them odd, while I shall call them blessed. 

 

Though he was only ten years old, he liked to carefully read through the newspaper, page by page, and I grew accustomed to long periods of silence as he pondered the various stories. I also knew, however, that he would then produce some remarkably profound observation or question, and I was never sure what he might pick up on. 

 

I don’t recall what the headlines for that day were, though they obviously got him thinking about death. “Do you think it’s sad when people die?”

 

Dear me, what can I say? “I think it’s natural to feel very sad when we lose those we love.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be sad, does it? And we don’t have to be so surprised about dying, because we’re all dying every day we’re alive.” 

 

My head is not so lost in the clouds that I thought academic abstractions were best suited for the occasion, so I simply shared a bit about how it felt when my family or friends passed away, and how I always tried to find something good in what at first seemed so bad. 

 

That he didn’t answer was, as I had leaned, a good sign, since it meant he was working it through in his head. Later, I would observe my own son doing much the same thing. 

 

I briefly mentioned the conversation to his mother, to show how much I admired his thoughtfulness. I must have expressed it poorly, however, as she immediately apologized for him. “I can’t figure out why he needs to be so morbid!” 

 

Yet I didn’t think it morbid at all, and I struggled to say that I rather found his words to be an affirmation of life. A Stoic attitude, in whatever form it may take, can perhaps come across as grim, but only when death is still mistaken as being unnatural, as something to be dreaded, as contrary to existence instead of as a necessary part of existence. 

 

The child, in his own way, was coming to terms with the same lesson Seneca had long ago offered to Lucilius. Indeed, as with so many philosophical insights, a good bit of that involves recollecting something we’ve long had a strong hunch about, although we are afraid to follow it through to the end. 

 

Death is not something remote and foreign, even as keeping it at arm’s length might offer a temporary comfort. It is not something that will happen, but something that is happening now, and it has been happening since we came into this world. 

 

Each moment is a coming-to-be, and then also inseparably bound up with that is a passing-away. Where any change takes place, birth and death are already present, as a continuous progression. 

 

My anxiety disappears when I recognize how all my experience is defined by generation and dissolution. If I look at a clock, the hour began to diminish with the tick of the first second; that last grain of sand through the hourglass is no greater or more significant than the first. 

 

I am transforming and moving along as I write these words, and if I can be at peace with this smaller scale of maturing, why should I be so frightened about the same pattern on a larger scale? 

 

As I become what they call “middle-aged”, at least half of my life is behind me, and quite possibly far more than that. The fact is I don’t know how much time remains for me, and that only becomes a burden when I am looking for quantity at the expense of quality. 

 

I have it within me to act with carefree virtue right now, and to embrace sheer joy right now. What else could matter? It doesn’t have to be sad if I don’t choose to make it sad. 

—Reflection written in 10/2012 

IMAGE: Johann Zoffany, Self-Portrait with Hourglass and Skull (c. 1776)