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This Is What They’re Going To Say
Daily Stoic
Torick potvin
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Apr 25 at 2:07 AM
Do you ever think about what people are going to say after you die? Maybe you think about this a lot—that’s why you work so hard, why you chase success. Because you want a legacy.
The truth is, no matter what you accomplish or who you are, the conversation is mostly going to go like this: “Did you hear that _______ died?” “No,” they’ll say. “How?!” And then they’ll tell them...and that will be it. Because that’s how it goes. Always has, always will.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius mentions all the doctors who furrowed their brows over patients’ deathbeds, eventually dying themselves. He mentions the worthlessness of posthumous fame. He mentions how Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and were both buried and how that was the end of that. Could Marcus have known that his own ashes would be stolen and lost when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in the years after his death?
Your whole life, your whole struggle, the most painful thing you and your family will experience will ultimately be reduced to a trivial exchange between acquaintances. If you happen to go out in some unusual way—a freak accident, sitting on the toilet, whatever—they may even laugh! What can you do about it? Nothing.
The point of this message is to remind you of a critical Stoic virtue: Humility. You are not immortal. You are not special. You will not be around to relish your legacy. You will not be able to hang onto your grudges or your possessions. So just let go. Be present. Be good because it’s a good way to be. And be prepared for what happens to all of us, the best and the worst of us.
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P.S. In case you missed it, we announced The Memento Mori Life Calendar. The average human lifespan nowadays is 80 years. That means, your life is made up of (hopefully) 4,160 weeks. So the Memento Mori Life Calendar has 4,160 dots, each dot representing a week of your life and each row representing 2 years of your life. By filling in the Memento Mori Life Calendar every week, you will not only see how much life you've already lived (or as Seneca says, how much you’ve already died), but also how much life you've (hopefully) got left.
And of course, none of those to-be-filled-in dots are guaranteed. Every day it is true: this could be your last day on this planet. As wonderful as it would be if there was no such thing as death, we have to use death as a tool. We have to use it as a spur to move us forward. We have to use it to help us clarify what really matters—your kids, your family. And we have to be made better for the fact that we don’t know how much time we have. We never do. And we never will.
Memento Mori.
To get yours now just go to dailystoic.com/mmcalendar
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