Stoicism for a Better Life – Weekly exercise (April 25, 2021)

Hello there,

For this week’s exercise, I will let the words of Marcus set the stage. This is from his Meditations IV 47:

” If any god told you that you will die tomorrow, or certainly on the day after tomorrow, you would not care much whether it was on the third day on the morrow, unless you were in the highest degree mean-spirited – for how small is the difference? So think it no great thing to die after as many years as you can name rather than tomorrow.”

I have been doing this for over a decade and I can very easily admit that in many ways I still live as if I will not die. I try very hard to make the most of my time, but I am convinced that if I were faced with an immediate death sentence, I would change many of the things I do on a day to day. Sure, I am lot closer to where a sage should be, than I was in the 2000s, but as a mere mortal and flawed human being, I still have much to learn and improve on.

Which brings us to this simple lesson this week: let us never stop reminding ourselves that we are dead men/women walking. So as a practical exercise this week, I leave you with a very short and simple task to reflect in your journal for 5 days straight and answer the following question in your words as best as you can (again…for 5 days straight):

What difference is there in a death sentence of a day, a week, a month, a year or a century. They are all extremely short. What does it change?

I would love to hear some of your ideas and answers to this very sobering question.

Anderson Silver (Stoicism for a Better Life)