In our last +1, we talked about the idea that the siren you might hear today wails for YOU. Then I suggested you actually IMAGINE yourself being put on that gurney at the end of your life.
Is that a morbid thought to imagine your lifeless body being put on a gurney?
Well, yah.
And that’s kinda the point.
In fact, this was a core practice of ancient Stoicism. Guys like Seneca actually tell us to “rehearse our deaths.”
Specifically, he says: “Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”
He also tells us not to worry about how LONG our lives last but how WELL we live them: “As it is with a play, so it is with life—what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.”
And, then there’s this gem: “Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.”
That’s Today’s +1.
Let’s appreciate just how brief our precious lives are by remembering that one day will be our last.
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