Let Us Not Fear Death

"You are a soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

If there is anything I have learned from my reading of Marcus Aurelius, it is that he does not think of death as many of us do. There are plenty of people in this world (myself included) who are utterly terrified of death - whether that be how we die, what happens to use after we die, when we die, etc. But reading Meditations, I've noticed that Aurelius points out that I shouldn't think of death the way I do; instead I should end my journey in contentment. 

"You have subsisted as a part of the Whole. You will vanish into that which gave you birth: or rather you will be changed, taken up into the generative principle of the universe." 

Everything in this world was born to die. Dying is such a natural process, and it is as necessary as sex or childbirth; and whether we die today, tomorrow, or fifty years from does not matter. We are a simple drop in the river of time. "There is a river of creation, and time is a violent stream. As soon as one thing comes into sight, it is swept past and another is carried down: it too will be taken on its way."

"Just as if a god told you that you would die tomorrow or at least the day after tomorrow, you would attach no importance to the difference of one day, unless you are a complete coward (such is the tiny gap of time): so you should think there is no great difference between life to the umpteenth year and life to tomorrow."

Because before long, all us will be laid out to rest side by side. 

"Think constantly how many doctors have died, after knitting their brows over their own patients; how many astrologers, after predicting the deaths of others, as if death were something important; how many philosophers, after endless deliberation on death or immortality; how many heroes, after the many others they killed; how many tyrants, after using their power over men's lives with monstrous insolence, as if they themselves were immortal. Think too how many whole cities have 'died' - Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, innumerable others. Go over now all those you have known yourself, one after the other:  then another one man follows a friend's funeral and is then laid out himself, then another follows him - and all in a brief space of time. The conclusion of all this? You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes.

"So one should pass through this tiny fragment of time in tune with nature, and leave it gladly, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth which bore it and grateful to the tree which gave it growth."

So why despair over death? Life is petty, wearying - "the emptying pomp of a procession, plays on the stage, flocks and herds, jousting shows, a bone thrown to puppies, tit-bits into the fishponds, ants toiling and carrying, the scurries of frightened mice, puppets dancing on their strings." Welcome death as a precious release from a repeating life.

It is your soul that ultimately matters, not the flesh it harbors in. "You embarked, you set sail, you made port. Go ashore now. If it is to another life, nothing is empty of the gods, even on that shore: and if to insensibility, you will cease to suffer pains and pleasures, no longer in thrall to a bodily vessel which is a master as far inferior as its servant is superior. One is mind and divinity: the other a clay of dust and blood."