On Death and Its Nature
Published:
Take a deep breath. Imagine yourself watching an engrossing film, whether in a theater or at home. Hours pass, the story unfolds, and eventually the screen fades to black. Just as every show must end, so too must our lives. The difference is that, unlike a film, the timing of our ending is unknown—it could come today, tomorrow, years, or decades from now.
Why then do we fear death? It is not death itself, but our opinion of it, that paints it as something terrible. Remember Socrates, Pythagoras, Epictetus, Plato—great minds, powerful thinkers—all of them are gone. We too must go there.
Here are my reflections on death, in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations:
- Life is short. A few years ago, I was not here. In a few years more, I will not be here again.
- Death is like friends traveling from Milan to Paris on different trains at different times. The journeys differ, but the destination is the same.
- Either I will die before my loved ones, or they will die before me. Each farewell could be the last. Let every goodbye carry the weight of finality.
- Death is simply change. Once I was a helpless child, later I was a student, later still an adult. In time, I will grow old and depart. Is this not another step in the same process?
- When someone dies—a child, a friend, a partner—why grieve as if they were mine to keep? They were given freely, and now returned to their owner.
- When the time comes, let me not be a coward. I did not choose the hour of my birth—why resist the hour of my return? Whether in two years or forty, life shows me nothing new but the same repeating cycles.
- Death is no different from sleep. In sleep, I know nothing, remember nothing. Why fear what resembles rest?
- Life is like boarding a ship with a captain at the helm, as Epictetus wrote. If the captain calls, I must not wander too far from the harbor, lest I miss the next voyage.
- My possessions—spoons, clothes, writings, books—will outlive me. They were never truly mine.
- Be like Epictetus, who even in the face of death continued to speak and teach philosophy.