You Will Be Forgotten, So Live
One of the themes most prominent in Stoic texts, from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations to Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, is that of the universe’s unending change. They implore us to think of all who came before us, and all who will come after, reminding us of the minuscule span of time we occupy. This is not to diminish our meaning, but to contextualize it, freeing us from any unproductive over-identification with the temporary.
Distilled down to its most useful parts, a right view of our mortality enables two things: 1). freedom from over-identification with (and the overvaluing of) the temporary, and 2). a regular awareness of priorities and the actions that align with them, the latter being akin to a mindset common among survivors.
People who have gone through near-death experiences tend to emerge from them with a new lease on life. They came face to face with what they risked losing, and arrived on the other side with a renewed compulsion to honor or embrace it.
Though we needn't require a physical brush with death to incite such a perspective. Its natural, inevitable reality should be sufficient for the refinement of exactly what our chief aims are, and the subsequent scrutiny of whether our actions align.
In his Meditations, we find Marcus Aurelius asking himself, "...why should [death] trouble me? For dispersal will be my lot whatever I do.” And so we're to make whatever it is we've chosen to do worth the doing, leading lives we can be proud of if we were, as Aurelius would phrase it, to leave at any moment.
The end being inevitable, our task is to decide how to live.
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