Marcus Aurelius on death
These two are my absolute favorite passages on death from The Meditations. Marcus reminds us (and himself!) that death should be approached with gratitude, humility, acceptance and courage. I hope I have it in me when my time comes.
To pass through this brief life as nature demands.
To give it up without complaint.
Like an olive that ripens and falls.
Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.
The following was the final passage in my copy of The Meditations. I still find it incredibly touching and it fills me with hope and gratitude for the life I have left.
You've lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred—what's the difference? The laws make no distinction. And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in—why is that so terrible?
Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor:
"But I've only gotten through three acts . . . !"
Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.
So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you.
Articles
Personal notes I've written over the years.
- When does the Binomial become approximately Normal
- Gambler's ruin problem
- The t-distribution becomes Normal as n increases
- Marcus Aurelius on death
- Proof of the Central Limit Theorem
- Proof of the Strong Law of Large Numbers
- Deriving Multiple Linear Regression
- Safety stock formula derivation
- Derivation of the Normal Distribution
- Comparing means of Normal populations
- Concentrate like a Roman
- How to read a Regression summary in R
- Notes on Expected Value
- How to read an ANOVA summary in R
- The time I lost faith in Expected Value
- Notes on Weighted Linear Regression
- How information can update Conditional Probability
- Coupon collecting singeltons with equal probability
- Coupon collecting with n pulls and different probabilities
- Coupon collecting with different probabilities
- Coupon collecting with equal probability
- Adding Independent Normals Is Normal
- The value of fame during and after life
- Notes on the Beta Distribution
- Notes on the Gamma distribution
- Notes on Conditioning
- Notes on Independence
- A part of society
- Conditional Expectation and Prediction
- Notes on Covariance
- Deriving Simple Linear Regression
- Nature of the body
- Set Theory Basics
- Polynomial Regression
- The Negative Hyper Geometric RV
- Notes on the MVN
- Deriving the Cauchy density function
- Exponential and Geometric relationship
- Joint Distribution of Functions of RVs
- Order Statistics
- The Sample Mean and Sample Variance
- Probability that one RV is greater than another
- St Petersburg Paradox
- Drunk guy by a cliff
- The things that happen to us