Dear Fellow Mortals,
What changes when we stop treating death as a distant subject and keep it close to daily life?
In this episode of Dying Every Day, which I recently brought to YouTube, Marcus Aurelius and St. Benedict urge us to keep death in view, yet they understood its demands differently.
You’ll also find below another entry from Mortal: A Journal for Finite Living. The idea behind it is simple. Our lives are finite, and remembering that can help us attend to how we actually live. Each day has a short reading on a perennial idea about how to live. Then come two questions: in the morning, “What deserves my attention today?” and in the evening, “Where did my attention actually go?”
As always, I hope you find something useful for daily life.
J.W.
Mortal: A Journal for Finite Living
Mortal is a 91-day journal that pairs a short reading from Stoics, saints, and sages on how to live with two questions, one for the morning and one for the evening. It is less about death than about the days before it.
Listen to Dying Every Day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, ...
Day 5: One Good Day Is Not a Good Life
Mortal: A Journal for Finite Living
Aristotle lectured at the Lyceum, just outside the walls of Athens, on how a person should live. His notes survive as the Nicomachean Ethics.
They begin with a large question: what do all our actions finally aim at?
The answer is eudaimonia, usually translated as happiness but nearer to flourishing: an activity carried on over time rather than a feeling.
Then comes a condition that is easy to read past.
It must be in a complete life.
One swallow does not make a summer, Aristotle says, nor does one day; and one day, or a short time, does not make a person blessed and happy.
That is sobering on a good day. On a bad one it is a mercy.
A good life cannot be had in a day; it is made by what we do, day after day, until the end.
Attend
What deserves my attention today?
Review
Where did my attention actually go?
This Week on Dying Every Day
Listen to Dying Every Day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, ...
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Thank you for reading/listening this week; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, remember to live.
J.W.
P.S. Feel free to share your thoughts or suggestions.