Time and Stoicism
My dog Bodhi is reaching the end. His back legs, so powerful in driving him in sprints around the yard or on those mad dashes out the open door and down to the beach for a swim, are betraying him now. In the morning when it’s time for him to go out I need to lift up his back end so he can walk slowly to the back door to go out to relieve himself. Time is catching up to him at the end of his thirteenth year.
“Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or impossible to see.” – Marcus Aurelius
Time knocks us all down eventually. We all sort of know it as we go through life, but most people push thoughts of death aside and distract themselves with television or politics or celebrity gossip or who knows what. I’ve come to embrace stoicism as a philosophy precisely because it cuts through the bullshit and lays out what we should all remember. Memento Mori. Carpe Diem.
Today I’m driving to New Jersey for a sales meeting. I’m debating going early to watch the Patriots game there. The alternative is to stay here and leave a bit later, spending time with family a bit longer. Under the right lens, the decision is obvious.