How to Die
“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and - what will perhaps make you wonder more - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do this anymore?
I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it.
Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.
Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.
Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?
What is death? A scary mask. Take it off – see, it doesn’t bite. Eventually, body and soul will have to separate, just as they existed separately before we were born. So why be upset if it happens now? If it isn’t now, it’s later.
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
Choose to die well while you can; wait too long, and it might become impossible to do so.
You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.
You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind — anything that only exists there. And you will immediately make vast space for yourself by grasping the whole universe in your thought, by contemplating the eternity of time, and by reflecting on the speed with which things change — each part of everything, the brief gap from birth to death, the infinite time before, and the equally infinite time that follows.”
-Stoics