fbpx

Join 300,000+ other Stoics and get our daily email meditation.

Subscribe to get our free Daily Stoic email. Designed to help you cultivate strength, insight, and wisdom to live your best life.

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

The Most Temporary and Illusory State

Daily Stoic Emails

On April 14, 1912, William John Rogers sent a postcard from the Titanic to his friend James Day. “Dear Friends,” Rogers wrote, “Just a line to show that I’m alive & kicking and going grand. It’s a treat.”

The next day, the Titanic sank. Rogers, a third-class passenger from Wales, went down with the ship, his body never identified.

The astronomer and philosopher Carl Sagan kept a copy of this postcard on his bathroom mirror, so he could see it every morning when he shaved. “[My wife] and I display the postcard for a reason,” he wrote. “We know that ‘going grand’ can be the most temporary and illusory state.”

The Stoics believed this too. Seneca had just begun his promising law career when a lung flare-up forced him into isolation for nearly a decade. Then, after he returned and successfully rebuilt his life, he was exiled to an island off the coast of Italy. Marcus had just returned home victoriously when the Antonine Plague broke out. Epictetus had just been made free, his school had just gained a following, when Domitian drove him into exile.

“Moments are torn from us,” Seneca wrote. “The whole future lies in uncertainty.” Fortune behaves as she pleases, he wrote. As we’ve talked about before, life comes at you fast. It doesn’t rhyme, it doesn’t reason, it doesn’t care about your wants or needs—it just is.

All we can do is accept the uncertainty of it all and heed Seneca’s command: “Live immediately.” And be prepared.