What, then, is it which makes us lazy and sluggish? None of us reflects that someday he must depart from this house of life; just so old tenants are kept from moving by fondness for a particular place and by custom, even in spite of ill-treatment.
Would you be free from the restraint of your body? Live in it as if you were about to leave it. Keep thinking of the fact that someday you will be deprived of this tenure; then you will be more brave against the necessity of departing.
But how will a man take thought of his own end, if he craves all things without end? And yet there is nothing so essential for us to consider. For our training in other things is perhaps superfluous.
Our souls have been made ready to meet poverty; but our riches have held out. We have armed ourselves to scorn pain; but we have had the good fortune to possess sound and healthy bodies, and so have never been forced to put this virtue to the test. We have taught ourselves to endure bravely the loss of those we love; but Fortune has preserved to us all whom we loved.
It is in this one matter only that the day will come which will require us to test our training.
Would you be free from the restraint of your body? Live in it as if you were about to leave it. Keep thinking of the fact that someday you will be deprived of this tenure; then you will be more brave against the necessity of departing.
But how will a man take thought of his own end, if he craves all things without end? And yet there is nothing so essential for us to consider. For our training in other things is perhaps superfluous.
Our souls have been made ready to meet poverty; but our riches have held out. We have armed ourselves to scorn pain; but we have had the good fortune to possess sound and healthy bodies, and so have never been forced to put this virtue to the test. We have taught ourselves to endure bravely the loss of those we love; but Fortune has preserved to us all whom we loved.
It is in this one matter only that the day will come which will require us to test our training.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 70
For all of our intellectual ruminations, I have a hunch that we are really approaching death with our feelings first, gripped by fear and panic. In clinging so desperately to mere existence, we ignore how Nature delights in change, and so we neglect to embrace our true essence—that this life must end is a very condition for learning to thrive in the virtues.
In other words, we don’t want to go, because we haven’t yet figured out why we are even here. Once we do discover our purpose, however, the prospect of dying is no longer so dreadful. Indeed, it can even become a sort of relief from the trials of Fortune, in the knowledge that the job was well done.
If I have already achieved what I was put here to do, why be terrified of moving on? More time will not make me any better, and I can choose to become a good man right now, at this very instant. I am the only obstacle. What I was will be reformed into something new, and the cycle will continue, in all of its beauty.
When I wish to be liberated from the burden of pain, I can remember how tenuous my hold on this life really is, not in a morbid way, but as a challenge to rise to the occasion. My problem is that I am still longing to receive more, when what I already have within me is enough. Everything else I do is quite secondary to the task of taking a hold of my responsibility to be genuinely human.
Once you have given me too much money, I run the grave risk of forgetting what it means to be poor. Once you have granted me constant health, I become weaker in the face of disease. Once I receive all the things I desire, I no longer know how to do without them. Prosperity of any sort can quickly become a curse, not a blessing.
By reflecting upon my mortality, and by my willingness to surrender this life at any moment, I am simply preparing myself to do without the trivial diversions, to walk without the crutches. Dying to vain expectations is finally living in serenity.
For all of our intellectual ruminations, I have a hunch that we are really approaching death with our feelings first, gripped by fear and panic. In clinging so desperately to mere existence, we ignore how Nature delights in change, and so we neglect to embrace our true essence—that this life must end is a very condition for learning to thrive in the virtues.
In other words, we don’t want to go, because we haven’t yet figured out why we are even here. Once we do discover our purpose, however, the prospect of dying is no longer so dreadful. Indeed, it can even become a sort of relief from the trials of Fortune, in the knowledge that the job was well done.
If I have already achieved what I was put here to do, why be terrified of moving on? More time will not make me any better, and I can choose to become a good man right now, at this very instant. I am the only obstacle. What I was will be reformed into something new, and the cycle will continue, in all of its beauty.
When I wish to be liberated from the burden of pain, I can remember how tenuous my hold on this life really is, not in a morbid way, but as a challenge to rise to the occasion. My problem is that I am still longing to receive more, when what I already have within me is enough. Everything else I do is quite secondary to the task of taking a hold of my responsibility to be genuinely human.
Once you have given me too much money, I run the grave risk of forgetting what it means to be poor. Once you have granted me constant health, I become weaker in the face of disease. Once I receive all the things I desire, I no longer know how to do without them. Prosperity of any sort can quickly become a curse, not a blessing.
By reflecting upon my mortality, and by my willingness to surrender this life at any moment, I am simply preparing myself to do without the trivial diversions, to walk without the crutches. Dying to vain expectations is finally living in serenity.
—Reflection written in 8/2013
IMAGE: Hippolyt Sobeslav Pinkas, The Old Man and Death (1863)
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