Death Hangs Over You; Live Now — Stoicism Week
Amidst the Covid pandemic, the future is uncertain.
But death is always there — how can we find comfort in the present moment?
Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
— Seneca
The lock down has felt like a pause in our lives. And while that pause can be good–it can be a moment for refreshment or reflection–many of us see it as a sort of purgatory. We are not using the time, but we are waiting. We are waiting for the lock down to lift, and then! We shall live again.
But we are doomed to die. It’s inevitable. Every day a page turns in our book, one closer to the end. What will be written on today’s page? It is the only page you can write.
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
— Seneca
What is to say, even, that when the quarantine lifts, we will be “living” as we are not right now? What will come back to us? Parties, concerts, dinners at restaurants, trips to the beach, dating, haircuts–for many of us, our jobs. But while you are without those, what do you have? You have today. You have your body and your mind, your heart and your will. How will you use them to better yourself, to better society, to better something that you value? To create something beautiful?
Will you even be alive then? Will Covid-19, or something completely unrelated, claim your life or some of your faculties? Will you thank yourself for waiting if that happens?
During one great plague, Marcus Aurelius wrote some of his best works. In quarantine for another, Newton discovered calculus. We do not need their genius to make our own contributions to our own lives or those of others in this time. The psychological pressure of quarantine is difficult; to what extent do we use it as an excuse?
Indeed, is the quarantine the first time that we have waited to live?
Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.
– Marcus Aurelius
The Coronavirus quarantine is a constraint on what we can do. But we have always lived with constraints: our financial means, our physical strength, our health, our mental faculties. These constraints only change in degree, not kind.
Your whole life is lived in constraints. There are things you can control and things you cannot. What will you do within the scope of your control, with the little time you have?
Want more stoicism?
This week is stoicism week at ReConsider, so each day there’ll be a new article reflecting on how stoicism can improve our political climate in 2020, as well as our mental well being. articles and published podcasts on stocism, which you can check out here:
- Bearing bad luck nobly
- Who were the stoics?
- Your mind makes your happiness
- Bearing bad luck nobly
- Podcast — How Stoics Deal with Plagues and Quarantines
- Podcast — Toolbox Talk: The Modern Stoic
Additionally, ReConsider’s Principles and Discussion Strategies are heavily influenced by stoic philosophy, which you can read about here.
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