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December    20th

FEAR    THE FEAR    OF  DEATH

“Do you then    ponder  how the supreme of  human   evils,  the surest  mark    of  the base    and cowardly,

is  not death,  but the fear    of  death?  I   urge    you to  discipline  yourself    against such    fear,   direct  all

your    thinking,   exercises,  and reading this    way—and you will    know    the only    path    to  human

freedom.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.26.38–39

o steel himself before he committed suicide rather than submit to Julius Caesar’s destruction of the
Roman Republic, the great Stoic philosopher Cato read a bit of Plato’s Phaedo. In it, Plato writes,
“It is the child within us that trembles before death.” Death is scary because it is such an unknown. No
one can come back and tell us what it is like. We are in the dark about it.
As childlike and ultimately ignorant as we are about death, there are plenty of wise men and women
who can at least provide some guidance. There’s a reason that the world’s oldest people never seem to be
afraid of death: they’ve had more time to think about it than we have (and they realized how pointless
worrying was). There are other wonderful resources: Florida Scott-Maxwell’s Stoic diary during her
terminal illness, The Measure of My Days, is one. Seneca’s famous words to his family and friends, who
had broken down and begged with his executioners, is another. “Where,” Seneca gently chided them, “are
your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation of so many years’ study against evils to come?” Throughout
philosophy there are inspiring, brave words from brave men and women who can help us face this fear.
There is another helpful consideration about death from the Stoics. If death is truly the end, then what
is there exactly to fear? For everything from your fears to your pain receptors to your worries and your
remaining wishes, they will perish with you. As frightening as death might seem, remember: it contains
within it the end of fear.