One law, many lives

Give yourself up willingly to Clotho, and let her spin your thread into whatever she pleases.

Everything lasts only a day—both the one who remembers and the one remembered.

Constantly observe that all things come to be through change, and accustom yourself to think that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as changing what exists and making new things like it. Everything that exists is, in a sense, the seed of what will come from it. But you think of seeds only as what is cast into the earth or into a womb—which is a very crude notion.

You will soon die, and you are not yet simple, not yet free of disturbance, not yet free of the suspicion that you can be harmed by outside things, not yet kindly disposed to everyone; nor do you yet locate wisdom solely in acting justly.

Examine people's ruling faculties, even those of the wise—what sort of things they avoid, and what sort they pursue.

What is evil for you doesn't reside in another person's ruling faculty, nor in any turning or alteration of your bodily covering. Where is it, then? In the part of you where the power to form judgments about evils resides. Let that power form no such judgments, and all is well. And if the part nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burned, filled with infection and decay, let the part that forms judgments about these things nonetheless remain undisturbed—that is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good that can happen equally to the bad man and the good man. For what happens equally to one who lives against nature and to one who lives according to nature is itself neither according to nature nor against it.

Constantly regard the universe as a single living being, having one substance and one soul; observe how all things refer back to a single perception, the perception of this one living being; observe how all things act with a single motion; observe how all existing things are joint causes of everything that exists. Notice too the continuous spinning of the thread, and the intricate weave of the fabric.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

It is no evil for things to undergo change, just as it is no good for things to persist as a result of change.

Time is like a river made of the events that happen—a violent current; for no sooner is a thing seen than it is swept away, and another comes in its place, and that too will be swept away.

Everything that happens is as familiar and ordinary as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer. Such is disease, and death, and slander, and treachery, and whatever else delights fools or troubles them.

In the sequence of things, what follows always fits closely with what came before. This sequence is not like a mere list of unconnected items, following one another only out of necessity, but a rational connection. And just as all existing things are arranged together in harmony, so the things that come into being display not mere succession, but a certain remarkable kinship.

Always remember the saying of Heraclitus: that the death of earth is to become water, the death of water is to become air, the death of air is to become fire, and so back again. Think too of the man who forgets where the road leads, and how people quarrel with the very thing they are in most constant communion with—the reason that governs the universe—and how the things they meet with every day seem strange to them. Consider that we ought not to act and speak as people do in sleep, for even asleep we seem to act and speak; and that we ought not, like children copying their parents, simply act and speak as we've been taught.

If some god told you that you would die tomorrow, or certainly the day after tomorrow, you would not much care whether it came on the third day rather than the next, unless you were utterly small-minded—the difference is so slight. In the same way, don't think it any great matter to die after as many years as you can name, rather than tomorrow.

Think constantly of how many physicians have died after so often furrowing their brows over the sick; how many astrologers, after predicting others' deaths with great pretension; how many philosophers, after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many warriors, after killing thousands; how many tyrants, who wielded power over others' lives with terrible arrogance as though they were immortal themselves; and how entire cities have died, so to speak—Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Add to the count everyone you yourself have known, one after another. One man, after burying another, was himself laid out dead, and another buried him—and all of this in a short span. In short, always observe how fleeting and worthless human affairs are: what was a bit of mucus yesterday will be a mummy or ashes tomorrow. So pass through this brief stretch of time in accordance with nature, and end your journey content, just as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing the nature that produced it and giving thanks to the tree that bore it.

Be like the headland against which the waves break endlessly; it stands firm, and the raging water around it is tamed. "How unlucky I am, that this has happened to me." Not at all—say instead, "How lucky I am, that though this has happened to me, I remain free of grief, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of the future." For such a thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have remained free of grief in the face of it. So why call one thing a misfortune rather than the other a piece of good fortune? Do you really call anything a misfortune for a human being that isn't a deviation from human nature? And does something seem to you a deviation from human nature when it isn't contrary to the will of that nature? Well, you know the will of nature. Will what has happened to you stop you from being just, magnanimous, temperate, sensible, secure against rash judgments and falsehood, from keeping your self-respect, your freedom, and everything else through whose presence a person's nature has all that is properly its own? Remember from now on, whenever something tempts you to grief, to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that bearing it nobly is good fortune.

It is a common but still useful aid toward scorning death to review those who clung tenaciously to life. What more did they gain than those who died early? Certainly they lie in their graves somewhere in the end—Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or anyone else like them, who carried out many others to be buried, and were then carried out themselves. The whole interval is small in any case; and think through how much trouble, in what sort of company, and in how frail a body this interval is laboriously spent. So don't think life a thing of any great value. Look behind you at the vastness of time, and ahead of you at another boundless stretch to come. In that infinity, what difference is there between the one who lives three days and the one who lives three lifetimes?

Always take the short way, and the short way is the way of nature—so say and do everything according to the soundest reason. For holding to this purpose frees a man from trouble, from struggle, from all pretense and ostentatious display.