Welcome to The PATH (Monday Meditation): A weekly reflection with three insights into daily life. This week’s reflection searches for ancient lessons on Becoming Every Day (Dying, Becoming, and Living).
A quick note before we begin:
I hope the new year is treating everyone well thus far. For anyone interested in starting the year with wisdom, I’m offering a free 5-week course (for Perennial Meditations members), Wisdom 101: An Introduction to Ancient Lessons for Modern Living. It will be delivered live over Zoom (tentatively scheduled for Wednesdays at Noon EST beginning on 18 Jan). The course is based on a previous article called The Timeless Art of Leading a Life. To gauge the level of interest — please reply or let me know in the comments if you plan to attend.
***Lastly, if you would like to become a paid member of Perennial Meditations but cannot afford it, please reach out to request a free membership (no questions asked!).
1. Dying
Seneca stressed to Luciulius that we are wrong to think about death as something that lies ahead. “We die every day,” observed Seneca, “for every day, some part of life is taken from us.” It is important to remember that last year has passed. There is no going back. We must all move forward one day at a time.
In a letter titled Taking Charge of Your Time, Seneca wrote,
Even when we are still growing, our life is shrinking. We lost our infancy, then childhood, then youth. All our time was lost in the moment of passage, right up to yesterday, and even today is divided with death as it goes by.
Similarly, my interview with David Fideler (author of Breakfast with Seneca) revealed that meditating on our mortality can help us to appreciate life. Fideler explains that remembering your death or memento mori is an aspect of what the Stoics called the premeditation of adversity. You contemplate negative things that could happen to you in advance — just for a moment.
“You could leave life right now,” wrote Marcus Aurelius to himself, “let that determine what you do, say, and think.” Remembering that we are dying every day (and moment) is a powerful reminder to live a meaningful life.
2. Becoming
If we are dying every day, we are also becoming every day. Every day is an opportunity—a chance to create. Existential philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir consistently stressed the notion of becoming.
My interview with Skye Cleary (author of How to Be Authentic) discussed existentialism, authenticity, and the quest to become who we are. For Beauvoir, there is no fixed essence to our being since we are always becoming something other than what we are today. For the Existentialists, “existence precedes essence,” meaning that we exist first and then spend the rest of our lives creating who we are (our essence).
Who are you becoming? What type of life are you creating?
The nineteenth-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed, “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” We do not discover ourselves; we make ourselves. “Creating ourselves is an art form,” explains Clearly, “the act of intentionally choosing who we become.”
How can you get intentional about becoming?
For some, becoming every day is a far more inspiring message than dying every day. This was the case for the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza. For Spinoza, “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
3. Living
In my conversation with Steven Nadler (author of Think Least of Death), I asked about Spinoza’s views on death and living. Nadler responded,
Some of the Stoics said that you could do nothing better than meditating upon your own mortality. … Spinoza goes in the opposite direction. He says that the truly free and rational person is focused on the joy and the power of living. They appreciate what they are and the power that constitutes what is to be a living individual. And the joy that comes from increases in that power as we become more rational and virtuous.
Regardless of which approach you find most inspiring. Finding something that propels you to create the life you want to lead is the point. And to dedicate your actions towards creating that life each day (and each moment).
Creating a life is ultimately an artistic process. In the short book Being and Becoming, author Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei explains, “In order to embrace our lives as our own, to shake free from the inherited expectations, the pressures of the crowd, or mere habit, we may need to exercise invention. Only creatively can we envision new paths or interpret familiar aspects of life in new ways, as existential philosophy tends to invite.”
We are dying and becoming every day. As we embark on this new year, we are wise to remind ourselves that each day (and moment) is a unique opportunity to begin again by creating the life we truly want to lead.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or make suggestions!
I’m looking forward to attending your Wisdom 101 course! 😁