XV. The Right Attitude Toward Death

Seneca does not dwell here, but he does not avoid the subject either.

The wise man does not fear Fortune because he does not treat anything she can take as truly his.

He has already counted his body, his reputation, his wealth, his position, even his own continued existence, among the things whose possession is uncertain. He holds all of it as borrowed. He uses it while it is lent. He returns it without resistance when it is recalled.

He can say to nature, when the time comes: take back my spirit. It is better than when you gave it to me. I have not held back. Of my own will, I give back what you gave me before I could think. What is hard about returning to the place you came from?

We often die worse because we are afraid of death. We make bad decisions, compromises, surrenders, all to avoid it. The avoidance costs us the very things that make life worth living. The person who holds life loosely lives it more fully, because they do not spend their days defending it.

Prepare for adversity in advance. The person who has thought through what they would do if disease came, if poverty came, if exile came, is not shattered when any of these arrive. Surprise is what destroys people. The suffering comes not from the event itself but from the gap between what was expected and what happened. Close that gap by expecting everything.

Dead men have been mourned in my neighborhood. Funerals have passed my door. Buildings have collapsed near me. People I knew in the morning were gone by evening. Was I supposed to be surprised when difficulty arrived at my door too? Difficulty was always circling. The only question was when it would land.

The person who thinks this way is not gloomy. They are free. Nothing Fortune does to them is news. They have already lived through it in imagination, and they know they can survive it. That knowledge is peace of a kind no external comfort can provide.