Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marcus Aurelius: Thou must not in matter of death carry…
Thou must not in matter of death carry thyself scornfully, but as one that is well pleased with it, as being one of those things that nature hath appointed.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Meditations. The reading beside it is ours.
Death is not a personal insult, nor is it a test of toughness. It is a condition of being alive, built into the same arrangement that gave us breath, appetite, and the ability to love. We do not have to welcome it with swagger or pretend it is pleasant. We can meet it without resentment. The problem is not mortality; it is the fantasy that we were promised an exception. When someone dies, when illness appears, when another birthday makes the numbers harder to ignore, nature has not broken its agreement with us. It is keeping it. That perspective does not erase grief, but it removes the extra burden of outrage. Today, notice where you are demanding permanence from something temporary. Then return to the work of living well while the time is still yours.
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