You could leave life right now

If you read much from the stoics (which I’ve done a bit, but not a lot so far), they tend to focus on a few key concepts. One is to let your decisions be led by logic instead of emotions, but they also push you to take a long world view.

I stole part of it for the title of this post, but Marcus Aurelius famously said (in his book “ Meditations “):

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Based on my age and health, I likely have 40–50 more years left. The odds are high that I’ll make it at least a few more decades, but it’s also possible that I’ll die before this post even gets published (note: high-five, I made it!).

If you dig much into stoicism, you’ll likely encounter the writing of Ryan Holiday, who does a fantastic job of bringing the concepts of stoicism into the modern age. Holiday shares the story of Graham Nash, and how he never got a final chance to talk to bandmate David Crosby:

In an interview shortly after the death of the musician David Crosby, Crosby’s bandmate Graham Nash talked about the falling out they never got to resolve. “He had sent me a voicemail saying that he wanted to talk to apologize,” Nash said. “I emailed him back and said, ‘Okay, call me at 11 o’clock tomorrow your time, which is 2 o’clock on the East Coast.’ He never called, and then he was gone.”

While the overarching goal of this post is to get you to think more about today, the tactical reason for this post is to get you to read this article from Ryan Holiday. I could share more snippets from it, but I think you’re much better served by checking it yourself and then working to apply some of his thinking into your day.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on May 30, 2023.