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Where Are They Now?

Daily Stoic Emails

Marcus Aurelius loved history and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of the great Romans and their poems. He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher Rusticus.

Sometimes, as he poured over these pages, a thought struck him. Where are they now? What happened to the advisors of Augustus? Or to the generals of Alexander–or Alexander himself? The answer was as obvious as it was inescapable…yet so easily ignored or denied by most of us in the course of our busy, daily existence.

The band Death Cab For Cutie had a verse about it:

In every movie I watch from the ’50s

There’s only one thought that swirls

Around my head now

And that’s that everyone there on the screen

Yeah, everyone there on the screen

Well, they’re all dead now

They’re all dead now

That’s what Marcus tried to remember about all the supposedly important or powerful people that he read about. They were gone now…barely remembered. Their names were no longer familiar. Their statues were falling down. Their posthumous fame already expiring (not that it did them any good).

And he knew–and this was the important part–the same thing was going to happen to him. “Everything is transitory,” he wrote, “the knower and the known.” What mattered then was the present moment and not much else. What mattered was being good because it was good, not because it would make him famous or wealthy or more powerful.

Memento Mori.

We are all mortal. Life is transitory and brief. It cannot be taken for granted. It can not be delayed and deferred because we long for immortality or legacy (which again, we cannot enjoy). They’re all dead now…and some day, perhaps very soon, you will be laid alongside them–and all your plans and pretensions with you.

Live and act accordingly.