Keep Death in Your Pocket — The Enchiridion

Epictetus gives one compact rule: keep death, exile, and every other thing that looks terrifying in front of you every day, with death first. This is not mood-board morbidity. It is a daily calibration so the worst cases are already on the table before your mind starts bargaining.

The middle of the teaching is the schedule itself. Not once a year at a funeral. Daily before your eyes. Death chiefly, then exile and the rest of life's terrors that people spend years pretending are impossible until they arrive without warning.

The payoff is double. You will never entertain an abject thought, the kind that shrinks you into worthlessness and panic. And you will not too eagerly covet anything, because desperation loosens when you remember how temporary possession always was. One sentence, but the whole Stoic filter: see the terrible clearly, then stop groveling inside your head and stop clutching at what was never guaranteed.