Living every day as a complete life

In my old age, I have stopped wanting the things I wanted when I was a boy. My days and nights are devoted to a single end: to put an end to my previous ills. I am trying to live every day as if it were a complete life. I don’t seize it as though it were my last, but I do believe that it might be.

I write this letter with this in mind: death may call me away while I am writing it. I am ready to go, and I will enjoy life just because I am not too anxious about the date of my departure.

Living and dying well

Before I became old, I tried to live well. Now that I am old, I will try to die well. Dying well means dying gladly. Make sure that you never do anything unwillingly. Tasks are compulsory when you resist them; they are not compulsory when you embrace them. This is what I mean: when you take orders gladly, you escape the worst part of slavery—doing what you do not want to do. What makes people unhappy is not acting under orders but acting against their will.

So let us set our minds in such a way that we desire what is demanded by circumstances. Above all, let us think of our own end without sadness. We must prepare for death before we prepare for life. Our life is well enough provided for, but we are too greedy with regard to what we have. Something is always lacking, and will always seem lacking.

To have enough of life does not depend on how long we have lived, but on our minds. I have lived, dear Lucilius, long enough. I have had my fill. Now I await my death.

(From Seneca's Moral Letters 61)

We die a little every day We do not suddenly fall upon death but advance towards it bit by bit; we die every day.

For every day, a little of our life is taken from us. Even when we are growing, our life is shrinking. We lose our childhood, then our boyhood, and then our youth. Right up to yesterday, all past time is lost time. Even today is shared between us and death. The water clock does not just empty with the last drop. The water has been dripping all along. Similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely completes the process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been on that road for a long time...

Death is not a single event; the death that takes us is merely the last.

Neither seek death, nor run away from it

I see what you are looking for. You are asking what I have packed into my letter, what inspiring saying from some mastermind, what useful precept. I will send you something dealing with the subject we have been talking about. Epicurus rebukes those who desire death just as much as those who fear it:

It is absurd to run towards death because you are tired of life, when it is your manner of life that has made you run towards death.

And in another passage:

It is absurd to seek death, when it is through fear of death that you have robbed your life of peace.

And you may add a third statement to the same effect:

Men are so foolish—no, so mad—that some are driven to death by fear of death.

By reflecting on any of these, you will strengthen your mind to endure both life and death. We need to be warned and strengthened in both directions: not to love life too much and not to hate it too much. Even when reason advises us to end it, we should not act on it heedlessly, without reflection. The brave and wise person should not flee life but merely leave it. Above all, we should avoid the weakness that has taken hold of many people—the desire for death.

Just as there is an unexamined tendency towards other things, dear Lucilius, there is also an unexamined tendency towards death. This tendency often grips the noble and adventurous as well as the timid and lazy. The former despise life; the latter are weighed down by it. Others become tired of doing and seeing the same things—not so much hating life as feeling disgusted by it.

We slip into this condition while philosophy itself seems to cheer us on. We say:

"How long must I endure the same things? Should I continue to wake and sleep, be hungry and be hot, and be cold? Nothing has an ending. Everything is connected in a circle. Things chase one another. Night comes on the heels of day, day on the heels of night. Summer ends in autumn; autumn is followed by winter; winter softens into spring. All nature passes this way only to return. I do nothing new. I see nothing new. Sooner or later, one becomes nauseated even by this." There are many who think that living is not painful, but pointless.

(From Seneca's Moral Letters 24)

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