Simple Stoic Advice
The Return
The Return
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.5:
Quote
“Death: something like birth, a natural mystery, elements that split and recombine.”
Advice
To the Stoics, death was just a threshold we all had to pass through in order to accomplish our duties. The Stoics believed that we came from Nature and would one day return to it. In other words, to a Stoic, death was just a natural progression to life, one that would happen regardless of how hard we fought to stay alive.
Marcus is often found reflecting upon this cycle in Meditations. He brings the idea of returning to Nature full circle in book four when he states:
“In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.”
Understand, we will one day pass. But this should not be thought of as a negative. It is just our return to Nature.
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