Seneca, Moral Letters 30.7

I am glad to hear such words, my dear Lucilius—not as new to me, but as leading me into the presence of an actual fact. 
 
And what then? Have I not seen many men break the thread of life? I have indeed seen such men; but those have more weight with me who approach death without any loathing for life, letting death in, so to speak, and not pulling it towards them.
 
Bassus kept saying: "It is due to our own fault that we feel this torture, because we shrink from dying only when we believe that our end is near at hand." 
 
But who is not near death? It is ready for us in all places and at all times. 
 
"Let us consider," he went on to say, "when some agency of death seems imminent, how much nearer are other varieties of dying which are not feared by us."
 
A man is threatened with death by an enemy, but this form of death is anticipated by an attack of indigestion. And if we are willing to examine critically the various causes of our fear, we shall find that some exist, and others only seem to be. 
 
We do not fear death; we fear the thought of death. For death itself is always the same distance from us; wherefore, if it is to be feared at all, it is to be feared always. For what season of our life is exempt from death? 
 
But what I really ought to fear is that you will hate this long letter worse than death itself; so I shall stop. Do you, however, always think on death in order that you may never fear it. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 30 

 
In the end, of course, there is no point in dwelling merely on the strengths and weaknesses of youth and old age, since how long is relative to how well.
 
Death itself is a certainty, and its time and place are ultimately at Fortune’s call. What remains mine? The capacity to accept death on my own terms. 
 
Some rush ahead to meet it, while others run away to avoid it, and in between the wise man can be indifferent. He is not at the mercy of either desire or fear, but instead he looks to the integrity of his virtues as the measure of his life. 
 
I am terrified of death because I think it will take away something I need, and the whole time I am forgetting how everything I need is already within me right now, and cannot be taken from who I am. We torture ourselves by choosing to care for the wrong ends. 
 
Modify the judgment, and thereby modify the feeling. You may grow tired of me repeating it, though it is a boon for me to hear it daily, even hourly. 
 
The role of the estimation is key. How silly it is for me to cower at death if I am threatened with a weapon, or diagnosed with a wasting disease! I suddenly take it to be bad now, for I originally failed to scan the bigger picture. 
 
Mortality was always present, and the extension or contraction of the time involved have never made the slightest bit of difference. 
 
More importantly, it is the attitude with which we go in that will decide the way we go out. Think differently from the herd. 
 
Pain is not itself an evil, or else human nature would not have been designed to defeat it. 
 
Poverty is not itself an evil, or else the good man would depend upon everything except himself to be good. 
 
Death is not itself an evil, or else the purity of the immediate act would be compromised by an infinity of cheap excuses. 
 
Pain, poverty, and death have never been the basic human problems—a lack of mindfulness is the basic human problem. 

—Reflection written in 11/2012 

IMAGE: George Frederic Watts, The Angel of Death (c. 1870)