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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,    MORAL   LETTERS,    101.7b–8a

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.