This week, you’ll take Seneca’s advice literally by rehearsing Stoic thinking around death every day. We suggest that you do this through free-form writing.

To start off, think about when you’ll have time to do this week’s exercise, and write it down.

Starting tomorrow you’ll write about the topic of death from a Stoic perspective. Each day, reread Seneca’s advice, which we’ve rewritten below in a modern form:

No one can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that a long life is a great blessing. Rehearse this thought every day, that you may be able to depart from life contentedly.

Then write for however long you’d like. If you need more space, you can download extra journal pages, along with blank prompts, tables, and quizzes, from our web page: theexperimentpublishing.com/?isbn=9781615195336. Below are some statements and questions that can serve as prompts. Feel free to try a new one each day, and use only the one that resonates with you most, or ignore the prompts entirely.

1. • Why do you not have complete control over the length of your life?
2. • How does the knowledge that you don’t have complete control over how long you live affect how you should live your life now?
3. • Why does Seneca claim that thinking too much about longevity leads to an unpeaceful life?
4. • How is not fearing death related to the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism?
   

◦ Practical wisdom: the ability to differentiate between what’s truly good and bad
◦ Justice: the capacity to treat people fairly and kindly
◦ Courage: proficiency in acting well despite fear or aversion to externals
◦ Temperance: skill in reducing desire for external things that aren’t in your complete control

1. • How does a fear of death and a strong desire for longevity cause you to act unvirtuously in your life? How does it affect your peace of mind?
2. • What would be some benefits of not fearing death and not obsessing over longevity? How might you live your life differently?

To print a blank version of this prompt, please go to our web page for the book: theexperimentpublishing.com/?isbn=9781615195336.

Many of the Stoics, especially Seneca, believed that fear of death is the root of many of our other fears. Most of the absolute worst-case scenarios we envision ultimately end there, from losing a job (since it could lead to poverty, in turn leading to death) to illness (for more obvious reasons). When Seneca’s friend Lucilius was suffering from a disease, Seneca wrote him a letter calling the lack of fear of death a cure for all ills: “[M]y counsel to you is this—and it is a cure, not merely of this disease of yours, but of your whole life—‘Despise death.’ There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death.”³ Further to achieving peace of mind, Seneca claims that a benefit of this thinking is a clear path for virtue: “For the mind will never rise to virtue if it believes that death is an evil; but it will so rise if it holds that death is a matter of indifference.”⁴

The goal of this week’s exercise is to see if Seneca’s claims hold true for you. A week likely won’t be enough to completely eliminate your fear of death and desire for longevity, but you will be able to put Seneca’s claims to the test.

Now that you’ve had some practice exploring Stoic thoughts about death, take a bit of time to reflect. Did Seneca’s claims hold up in your own experience? Did you find this exercise useful? If it was difficult, do you think that it would become easier with practice? Write your thoughts about this exercise and what you learned over the course of the week.

Next up is our final, and more cheerful, exercise in the Discipline of Desire.