on escaping the fear of death, new leases on life, and distinguishing between the good and bad things in this world

at the bottom of this post are the longer passages from which the immediately following pull quotes are from. they’re both from seneca, letter LXXVIII (78), on death:

“My own advice to you – and not only in this present illness but in your whole life as well – is this: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.”

“Illness has actually given many people a new lease of life; the experience of being near to death has been their preservation.”

“… the one requirement is that we cease to dread death. And so we shall as soon as we have learnt to distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world.”

i’m really feeling these lines right now as i continue to ruminate about death. as a person who has been near to death, i have experienced conscious (and maybe even unconscious) changes in how i live my life. and, though i hesitate to say this, i actually feeling pretty lucky in that regard. knowing how close i was to not existing has, in seneca’s words, been my preservation. i have been saved from potentially many years of wandering because i have had my sights focused on making the most of what life i have left (knowing that it could be over in a second).

and not only have i been given focus, i’m also finding myself increasingly unafraid of putting myself out there. to be clear, i’m still pretty afraid of it, but it gets easier to push through every time i remind myself (usually while mediating) that this could be my last day.

and then finally, that last quote about learning how to distinguish between good and bad things. knowing how easily death can come makes it so much easier to know how to “distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world.”

reading this particular letter from seneca really helped me crystallize many disparate thoughts. really digging seneca’s version of stoic philosophy.

longer quotes:

“My own advice to you – and not only in this present illness but in your whole life as well – is this: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear. There are three upsetting things about any illness: the fear of dying, the physical suffering and the interruption offer pleasures. I have said enough about the first, but will just say this, that the fear is due to the facts of nature, not of illness. Illness has actually given many people a new lease of life; the experience of being near to death has been their preservation. You will die not because you are sick but because you are alive. That end still awaits you when you have been cured. In getting well again you may be escaping some ill health but not death.”

“… the one requirement is that we cease to dread death. And so we shall as soon as we have learnt to distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world. Then and only then shall we stop being weary of living as well as scared of dying. For a life spent viewing all the variety, the majesty, the sublimity in things around us can never succumb to ennui: the feeling that one is tired of being, of existing, is usually the result of an idle and inactive leisure. Truth will never pall on someone who explores the world of nature, wearied as a person will be by the spurious things.”