The 50th Law - 50 Cent [94]
To accomplish this is remarkably simple. It is a matter of looking inward and seeing death as something that you carry within. It is a part of you that cannot be repressed. It does not mean that you brood about it, but that you have continual awareness of a reality that you come to embrace. You convert the terrified, denial-type relationship to death into something active and positive—finally released from pettiness, useless anxieties, and fearful, timid responses.
This third, fearless way of approaching death originated in the ancient world, in the philosophy known as Stoicism. The core of Stoicism is learning the art of how to die, which paradoxically teaches you how to live. And perhaps the greatest Stoic writer in the ancient world was Seneca the Younger, born around 4 B.C. As a young man, Seneca was an extremely gifted orator, which led to a promising political career. But as part of a pattern that would continue throughout his life, this gift incurred the envy of those who felt inferior.
In A.D. 41, with trumped-up charges from an envious courtier, Emperor Claudius banished Seneca to the island of Corsica, where he would languish essentially alone for eight long years. Seneca had been familiar with Stoic philosophy, but now on this barely inhabited island he would have to practice it in real life. It was not easy. He found himself indulging in all kinds of fantasies and falling into despair. It was a constant struggle, reflected in his many letters to friends back in Rome. But slowly he conquered all of his fears by first conquering his fear of death.
He practiced all kinds of mental exercises, imagining painful forms of death and possible tragic endings. He would make them familiar and not frightening. He used a sense of shame—to fear his mortality would mean he abhorred nature itself, which decreed the death of all living things, and that would mean he was inferior to the smallest animal that accepted its death without complaint. Slowly he extirpated this fear and felt a sense of liberation. Feeling that he had a mission to communicate this newfound power of his to the world, he wrote at a furious pace.
In A.D. 49 he was finally exonerated, recalled to Rome, and appointed to a high position as praetor and private tutor to the twelve-year-old boy Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (soon to be known as Emperor Nero). During the first five years of Nero’s reign, Seneca was the de facto ruler of the Roman Empire, as the young Emperor gave himself over to the pleasures that were to later dominate his life. Seneca had to constantly struggle to rein in some of Nero’s violent tendencies, but for the most part those years were prosperous and the empire was well governed. Then envy set in again, and Nero’s courtiers began spreading stories that Seneca was enriching himself at the expense of the state. By A.D. 62, Seneca could see the writing on the wall, and he retired from public life to a country house, handing over almost all of his wealth to Nero. In A.D. 65 he was implicated in a plot to kill the emperor, and an officer was sent to, in the Roman style, order Seneca to kill himself.
He calmly asked permission to review his will. This was refused. He turned to his friends who were present and said, “Being forbidden to show gratitude for your services, I leave you my one remaining possession and my best: the pattern of my life.” Now he would be reenacting what he had rehearsed in his mind so many years before. His ensuing suicide was horrifically difficult—he sliced the veins in his arms and ankles, sat in a hot bath to make the blood flow faster, and even drank poison. The death was slow and incredibly painful, but he maintained his calmness to the end, making sure that everyone would see that his death matched his life and his philosophy.
As Seneca understood,