Lucius Annaeus Seneca

You have been inquiring about our friend Lucilius Bassus. He has gone over to the majority. But he did not suddenly tumble into ill-health, nor was he overcome by the disease - he slipped away. And that kind of departure, I assure you, is not only more pleasant, but is also easier.

Some diseases snatch men away; others give them leisure to depart. This last type, which gives us time to arrange our affairs, is more manageable, since it gives the soul time to prepare for its departure.

Bassus kept saying: “It is my daily business to die.” What he meant was that every day he was completing his life. For we are dying every day; I mean, we are losing some portion of our life, and even when we are growing, our life is on the wane.

We lose our childhood, then our boyhood, then our youth. Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day which we are now spending is being shared between ourselves and death.

It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. The willing, destiny guides them. The unwilling, destiny drags them.

I have often wondered whether it is better to have a quick death or a lingering illness. Let me share with you the bright side of each. In illness the soul has time to go out; in sudden death, the advantage is that it does not expect to go. Either is satisfactory; the one is longer, the other more rapid.

But what is most shameful is to be weary of life and yet afraid to die.

You may say: “But suppose one is in a position where life becomes harder to bear than death to accept?” Well, then, let him accept death. It is better to die once and for all than to suffer continually.

But I am running on too long about a single point. The question is, not whether I ought to flee from life, but how I ought to flee from it. We may flee from life as we would flee from fire - sometimes by making a quick dash, sometimes by retreating slowly.

The door of death is never shut. This is one of the things which makes life endurable, that no one can compel us to live.

The very law which grants us life sets us free from it; the moment has always been ours to choose. There is nothing in life so much to be feared as living too long.

I shall not abandon old age, if old age preserves me intact for myself, and intact as regards the better part of myself; but if old age begins to shatter my mind, and to pull its various faculties to pieces, if it leaves me, not life, but only the breath of life, I shall rush out of a house that is crumbling and tottering.

I shall not avoid illness by seeking death, as long as the illness is curable and does not impede my soul. I shall not lay violent hands upon myself just because I am in pain; for death under such circumstances is defeat.

But if I find out that the pain must always be endured, I shall depart, not because of the pain but because it will be a hindrance to me in all my reasons for living. He is weak and cowardly who dies because he is suffering; he is foolish who lives to suffer.

Farewell.

Seneca