November

30th
FOLLOW THE LOGOS

“The person who follows reason in all things will have both leisure and a readiness to act—they
are at once both cheerful and self-composed.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, M EDITATIONS, 10.12b

T he guiding reason of the world—the Stoics called this the logos—works in mysterious ways.
Sometimes, the logos gives us what we want, other times it gives us precisely what we do not want.
In either case, they believed that the logos was an all-powerful force that governed the universe.
There is a helpful analogy to explain the logos: We are like a dog leashed to a moving cart. The
direction of the cart will determine where we go. Depending on the length of the leash, we also have a
fair amount of room to explore and determine the pace, but ultimately what each of us must choose is
whether we will go willingly or be painfully dragged. Which will it be?
Cheerful acceptance? Or ignorant refusal? In the end, they amount to the same.
 DECEMBER

MEDITATION ON MORTALITY
 December 1st
PRETEND TODAY IS THE END

“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.”
—SENECA, M ORAL LETTERS, 101.7b–8a

“L ive each day as if it were your last” is a cliché. Plenty say it, few actually do it. How reasonable
would that be anyway? Surely Seneca isn’t saying to forsake laws and considerations—to find
some orgy to join because the world is ending.
A better analogy would be a soldier about to leave on deployment. Not knowing whether they’ll return
or not, what do they do?
They get their affairs in order. They handle their business. They tell their children or their family that
they love them. They don’t have time for quarreling or petty matters. And then in the morning they are
ready to go—hoping to come back in one piece but prepared for the possibility that they might not.
Let us live today that same way.
 December 2nd
DON’T MIND ME, I’M ONLY DYING SLOW

“Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, M EDITATIONS, 2.11.1

H ave you ever heard some ask: “What would you do if you found out tomorrow that you had cancer?”
The question is designed to make you consider how different life might be if you were suddenly
given just a few months or weeks to live. There’s nothing like a terminal illness to wake people up.
But here’s the thing: you already have a terminal diagnosis. We all do! As the writer Edmund Wilson
put it, “Death is one prophecy that never fails.” Every person is born with a death sentence. Each second
that passes by is one you’ll never get back.
Once you realize this, it will have a profound impact on what you do, say, and think. Don’t let another
day tick away in ignorance of the reality that you’re a dying person. We all are. Can today be the day we
stop pretending otherwise?
 December 3rd
THE PHILOSOPHER AS AN ARTISAN OF LIFE AND DEATH

“Philosophy does not claim to get a person any external possession. To do so would be beyond
its field. As wood is to the carpenter, bronze to the sculptor, so our own lives are the proper
material in the art of living.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.15.2

P hilosophy is not some idle pursuit appropriate only for academics or the rich. Instead, it is one of the
most essential activities that a human being can engage in. Its purpose, as Henry David Thoreau said
a few thousand years after Epictetus, is to help us “solve the problems of life, not only theoretically but
practically.” This aligns nicely with Cicero’s famous line: “To philosophize is to learn how to die.”
You’re not reading these quotes and doing these thought exercises for fun. Though they may be
enjoyable and help you lighten up, their aim is to help you sculpt and improve your life. And because all
of us have but one life and one death, we should treat each experience like a sculptor with his chisels,
carving until, to paraphrase Michelangelo, we set free the angel in the marble.
We are trying to do this difficult thing—living and dying—as well as we can. And to do that, we must
remember what we’ve learned and the wise words we’ve been given.