Embracing Life’s Finitude

Sweet Bites for July 4, 2025

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.

This month we’re exploring the theme of Mortality.

Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.

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🍰 Mini Bite

He was tasked with playing an impossible role. After being exiled to Corsica by Emperor Claudius, Seneca the Younger was brought back to Rome at the behest of Agrippina, young Nero’s mother, to tutor the boy.

Unlike Seneca who had been tutored in all the studies, including philosophy, his task with the young boy was to teach him how to be emperor—understand how to strategize, how to navigate the law, and how to speak.

For years, Seneca worked to teach the boy these things, slipping in philosophy where and when he could, trying, in a masked fashion, to ensure the boy could grow into a man of virtue.

“The duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow-men; if possible, to be useful to many of them,” Seneca would write, “failing this, to be useful to a few; failing this, to be useful to his neighbors, and, failing them, to himself: for when he helps others, he advances the general interests of mankind.”

But alas, he could not change him, and in turn, he would pay with his life.

While being Nero’s tutor, Seneca gained tremendous wealth. But after spending years attempting to tutor the boy and watching him murder person after person, Seneca had had enough. He was old, tired, and ready to live a life outside of the emperor’s circle.

He offered Nero all his wealth, everything he had built up, in exchange to walk away.

Instead of being freed of his duties, Seneca would eventually be brought back to Nero, trumped up on conspiratorial charges to overthrow the emperor, and required to commit suicide.

Seneca, like Socrates before him, was forced to drink hemlock, a potion made from the toxic hemlock plant.

But for some reason, the drink did not do the task. Instead, Seneca survived. He was then forced to cut his wrists, but due to his age and frailty, the job could not be completed.

Finally, he was placed into a steam bath where he suffocated.

“Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life," he would remind himself in his surviving writings. “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.”

One can imagine Seneca preparing for this end his whole life, reflecting on the end of Socrates’ life, or of Cato the Younger’s who, rather than submit to Caesar, drove his sword through his belly and ripped out his own intestines.

Like many who came before him, Seneca became wrapped in a dangerous game, and he payed with his life.

But it is in his death that we learn who he really was because it is in our final moments, when we know there is no escape or denial, we demonstrate what we’re truly made of.

“This is our big mistake,” Seneca wrote, “to think we look forward toward death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”

Holding Socrates and Cato the Younger as his guide posts, Seneca did not fight against his destiny. He did not beg or weep. He accepted his fate.

We too all face the same fate, though hopefully not nearly as painful or drawn out. But it is in these moments that we not only provide a lesson to others but to ourselves.

We choose how we wish to leave. We decide how we close the book. We write the final lesson we will leave.

“The end is not evil,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, “it does not disgrace us.”

So in these moments we choose whether we wish to show the world what we’re made of. The choice is ours.

And the decision needs to be made.

🧠 This Week in Mind Candy 📚

🧘🏻 Monday Meditation

🦉 Wednesday Wisdom

💭 Three Stoic Thoughts on Death

Accepting mortality takes a lifetime

“…learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.”

Seneca

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The wise embrace reality, even when unbearable

“Why is it that the wisest among us die most calmly, while the foolish die in the most distress?”

Cicero

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We will either stop feeling, or it will change

“Fear of death is fear of what we may experience. Nothing at all, or something quite new. But if we experience nothing, we can experience nothing bad. And if our experience changes, then our existence will change with it - change, but not cease.”

Marcus Aurelius

📰 Article Worthy of a Read/Listen

What My Mother Taught Me About the End of Life

📖 Book on Weekly Theme

How to Die by Seneca

Part of Princeton University Press’ Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, How to Die examines the work of Seneca and structures it in five sections, each focused on a different aspect of death.

Three passages:

“Death is the undoing of all our sorrows, an end beyond which our ills cannot go; it returns us to that peace in which we reposed before we were born. If someone pities the dead, let him also pity those not yet born.”

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“What's to be feared in returning to where you came from? He lives badly who does not know how to die well.”

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“…when that inescapable hour arrives, go out with a calm mind.”

📚 Wisdom

“Man is perishing. That may be, and if it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate.”

Miguel de Unamuno

Source: Aristotle’s Way

🗯️ Three Thoughts from Me

When we begin to accept our own mortality, when we reject the idea that the cessation of life will not happen for us, we begin to truly live.

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Life consists of five phases: birth, growth, change, decay, and finally death.

Remembering these stages helps remind us of the finitude of our existence.

And in turn, make better decisions with the remainder of our time.

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To open our eyes to our own mortality is to embrace our true existence and remind the world of our place within it.

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Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

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