Making Peace with Your Final Exit — Letters from a Stoic

At some point, you have to stop wanting what you've always wanted. Letter 61 opens with that recognition. In old age, Seneca has ceased to desire what he desired as a boy. Every day is lived as if it might be the last, not anxiously, not as if snatched, but with a kind of completeness. The present letter is written as if death might call him away mid-sentence.

He is ready to depart and says he will enjoy life precisely because he is not anxious about when that departure comes. His practical formula: before becoming old, he tried to live well. Now that he is old, he will try to die well. Dying well means dying gladly. And dying gladly means never doing anything unwillingly.

What is a necessity when you resist it becomes a choice when you desire it. The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; the man who does it against his will is. Set your mind to desire what circumstances demand, above all, to approach your own end without sadness. Life is well enough furnished.

We are simply too greedy with regard to its furnishings. To have lived long enough depends not on years or days, but on the mind.