One Who Fears Death, Fears Life Itself
Make Death your Eternal Companion
There is a compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms called psilocybin. Through experiment, it is found that this compound can greatly reduce the fear of death in terminal cancer patients. Pharmacologist Richard Griffiths says in an interview that the drug imparts “an understanding that in the largest frame, everything is fine”.
In the largest frame, everything is fine. This is the exact message Lucius Annaeus Seneca preached to Roman readers of the mid-first century AD relying on stoic philosophy.
To Die Well
To “die well” was immensely important to Seneca, whether that meant accepting one’s death calmly and peacefully, or enduring with courage the violence done to one’s body, either by one’s own hand or by that of an implacable enemy.
For most readers, Seneca’s writing can be viewed as macabre or death-obsessed. But Seneca might argue that such readers are life-obsessed. Deluding themselves with a denial of the importance of death. Dying, for him, was one of the essential functions of living, and the only one that could not be learned or refined through repetition. For death comes for everyone and only once.
A whole lifetime is needed to learn how to live, and — perhaps you’ll find this more surprising — a whole lifetime is needed to learn how to die,”
— Seneca
If you pay careful attention to the world around you, you will notice that all things that seem to die are in fact only transformed. Nothing in this cosmos is extinguished, but rather falls and rises by turn.
Summer departs but comes back the next year, the sun dies at night, but the morning revives it. Whatever movement of the constellations has passed, repeats; Ages come and ages go, but the cycle always continues.
In ignorance of this cosmic fact, we are terrified of death. Now you think: “death will come for me,” but didn’t you experience death already? As Seneca says: “We think that death comes after, whereas in fact, it comes both before and after. Whatever existed before us was death, for death is nonexistence”
Death is the undoing of all our sorrows, an end beyond which our ills cannot go; it returns us to that peaceful place in which we dwelled before we were born.
If someone pities the dead, let him also pity those not yet born.
— Seneca
People who fear death die every moment of their life until the final moment comes when they are actually thrown out of life, like a landlord kicking you out of his house.
But the person who does not disdain death is a virtuous person. When the time comes for him, he isn’t thrown out but rather takes his leave peacefully. As Seneca says: “The wise man is never thrown out, for to be thrown out is to be expelled from a place that you leave unwillingly; the wise man does nothing unwillingly”.
The Fear of Death
Fear of death not only makes dying more difficult but diminishes the nobility and moral integrity of all of life.
— Seneca
Death is the only thing in this world that is indifferent. It doesn’t care whether you are rich or poor, young or old, wise or mad, it comes for all.
Death is like a mother who loves all of her children unbiased. And when she comes, she is determined to take them back into her eternal womb.
The mind will never strive for virtue if it thinks death is an evil thing; it will, though, if it considers death an indifferent.
— Seneca
So why do you have to fear? What’s to be feared in returning to where you came from?
We know that death awaits us all, but still, we live fearfully and try our best to avoid meeting death’s eyes. We tremble when we believe death is near. But who is it not near, when it’s ready and waiting at every moment, in every place? You may fear that sickness might kill you, but what if an earthquake levels your house while you are asleep. Death always comes as a surprise for those who are unprepared and fearful of it.
The one who fears death, fears life itself.
— Seneca
Acceptance
It’s quite a foolish thing to fear death. Death is inevitable just like old age. It is the universal endpoint. You should fear the things you are unsure of; but death is the only certainty, the only thing we can ever be sure of. So why be fearful of it when it’s only a matter of waiting.
Look around you, look at history. The great cities of the past that though they were impeccable are now in the dust. Centuries-old mountains become planes and great rivers turn dry.
You see, death not only comes for you, it comes for everyone and everything around you. You and I are not special, and all our affairs are just a blip in a negligible space of endless time. It is great comfort in knowing that in the face of death, the earth too is mortal.
The Eternal Companion
Seneca says: “He who fears death will never do anything to help the living. But he who knows that this was decreed the moment he was conceived will live by principle and at the same time will ensure, using the same power of the mind, that nothing of what happens to him comes as a surprise.”
In other words, he is ready to meet death in every moment of his life. And when the moment arrives, he goes out with a calm and serene mind. For him, Death is his eternal companion
