The Stoic Approach to Time

Four thoughts to reflect on

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 Time.

“Everything transitory - the knower and the known,” Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in the final years of his life.

The entries of the Meditations that Marcus wrote are filled with deep reflections reminding himself how to keep his cool, how to handle individuals who frustrated him, how to approach death.

One of the themes on display over and over again was time. Time was a crucial aspect to Marcus as he felt the end of his life approaching.

It is also a central theme within Stoic philosophy.

Our mortality

“Death either consumes us or sets us free. If we are released, then better things await us once our burden is removed; if we are consumed, then nothing is waiting for us at all: both goods and evils are gone.”
Seneca

Our mortality is a grounding principle within our understanding of time. The Stoics were no different.

Having an end-date was central to how the Stoics interacted with the world. It helped ground them in necessity.

“The whole race of man, both that which is and that which is to be, is condemned to die,” Seneca writes in moral letter 71. We’re all living the same mortal existence, but some of us consciously keep this top of mind so as to align our actions to our life.

When we remind ourselves of our own mortality, of memento mori, we more easily force ourselves to examine the actions we’re taking and in turn, reposition ourselves toward goals that best fit the existence we want to have.

Life’s brevity

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
Marcus Aurelius

The paradox of thinking about our mortality is it is an abstract thought. Many of us imagine growing old and passing. But there is no clear end-date for us. It’s all just sitting there, looming over us. Yes we’re all going to die but none of us know when, and we stumble through life with this thought in the back of our heads.

Think about it, how many of us have put off living our lives until certain conditions are met? Until we have a certain amount of money, until we’re in better shape, until we’ve lined up all our ducks in a row?

“Most of us fear the deadening of the body and would resort to every means to avoid falling into such a state,” Epictetus taught his students, “but when it comes to the deadening of the soul, we're not in the least concerned.”

When we acknowledge the brevity of our existence, we push ourselves to stop wasting time and do what is necessary for our lives. We stop letting things off to tomorrow as we do not know if tomorrow will come.

Life’s brevity feeds the soul for action today.

The present moment

“Embrace every hour. If you lay hands on today, you will find you are less dependent on tomorrow.”
Seneca

Here lies one of the great paradoxes within Stoicism, the ability to remain present.

But can we ever truly find the present moment? Is this the present? Or how about now?

The present moment is always moving forward with everything quickly turning to the past.

“Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.” Marcus wrote to himself.

But this needn’t hang us up. Looking at the “spirit” of the present moment leads us to understand that we must bring our attention to the moment, to be aware of what we say, think, and do.

By centering ourselves in this way, by actively working to procure our attention to our daily lives, we bring intention to what we do.

When we provide ourselves the ability to understand ourselves, we begin to live more presently.

Part of something larger

“Dwell upon everything that exists and reflect that it is already in process of dissolution and coming into being by change and a kind of decay or dispersion, or in what way it is born to die, in a manner of speaking.” Marcus Aurelius

Everything is eventually destroyed. There is a cycle to life. To the universe.

Everything is in flux. A constant tug-of-war between creation and destruction.

Whether we get to live thirty years or sixty, we are still a part of this larger flow of life.

Marcus continually reminds himself of our nature, our part in this grander narrative. It allows us to not only keep our mind tied to the time we have remaining, but also helps diminish fear of our own mortality.

“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.”

The Stoics saw themselves as just a small grain of sand in the larger cosmos.

This doesn’t mean what we do is not important. On the contrary, the time we spend, regardless of how long or short, is meaningful if used wisely the Stoics would say. But there’s no denying our mortality.

So much of the Stoic approach to time is tied to this idea of our existence. By centrally grounding ourselves in this notion, in this understanding that we will not live forever, we better embrace the time we do have.

It is as Seneca remarked, “we have to be more careful in preserving what will cease at an unknown point.”

So grab the time you have today. We do not know when it will cease to be.

Before you go…

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Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

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