Good day, Stoics. 🫡
There was a last time somebody carried you to bed, and nobody in the room knew it was the last one.
That is the thing about lasts.
They almost never announce themselves.
💬 A NOTE FROM MARCUS
First, thank you.
A lot of you picked up the Stoic 30 workbook this month, and some of you wrote to tell me what you did with it. I read every one.
So here’s the news. There are two more books now, which makes three.
Stoic 30. The 30 day challenge in print, with room to write down what you actually did.
The Stoic 30 Journal. 365 questions, one a day, for when you want to keep going.
The Stoic Reset Book. Seven short programs for the weeks you’ve drifted.
All three are on Amazon, in paperback and on Kindle.
More are already in the works.
There’s been a lot going on this year, at work and at home. I’m still doing my part. Getting Stoicism to people who can actually use it is the job I gave myself, and I’m not putting it down.
If you’ve read any of them, a review helps more than you’d think. So does hitting reply and telling me what landed. I read all of it, and it changes what I write next.
📋 IN TODAY’S ISSUE
Why the lasts never announce themselves
What memento mori actually is, and what it is not
Epictetus saying the harshest sentence in this newsletter
One more thought from Marcus, which he nearly cut
The Last Time Drill, which takes about ten seconds
🎯 THE LESSON
There was a final time you saw a friend who simply drifted away. A final conversation with somebody before things changed.
A last ordinary evening in a house you later moved out of.
None of them felt like anything. That is why they are gone.
This is not meant to be a sad thought, although it has a sting in it.
It is meant to be a practical one, because there is only one thing you can do with it.
You can’t identify the lasts in advance. You can only treat more of the ordinary ones as though they might be.
That is what the Stoics were doing with memento mori, and it is usually described wrong.
It isn’t morbid and it isn’t about being afraid.
Marcus Aurelius wrote that you could leave life right now, and told himself to let that determine what he did.
Not to panic. To pay attention.
📜 STOIC LINE OF THE DAY
“In the very act of kissing the child, let the soul say: Tomorrow you will die.”
💭 GOING DEEPER
That line shocks people, and it should be read with what surrounds it.
Epictetus is arguing against a specific kind of affection. The kind that assumes permanence and therefore stops looking.
You can love somebody and barely see them, because you have decided they will be there tomorrow.
He is not asking you to brace for loss. He is asking you to look at the person while they are still in the room.
It does not produce dread. It produces a kind of sharpening.
The evening stops being a routine evening and becomes this specific one, which is the only kind there has ever been.
💬 ONE MORE THOUGHT FROM MARCUS
One more thought, and I nearly cut it for being too small.
There is a diner I went to every Saturday with somebody, for about two years.
I cannot tell you which Saturday was the last one. I have tried to work it out and it is gone.
Nothing in me registered it at the time, which is the point of today’s issue, and also the reason I wrote it.
❓ QUESTION OF THE DAY
Which ordinary thing in my week am I treating as though there is an unlimited supply?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
⏳ THE LAST TIME DRILL
Pick one ordinary thing happening today. A drive, a meal, a conversation.
Before it starts, say one sentence to yourself. There will be a last one of these, and I will not know which.
Then do the thing with your phone in another room.
That is the whole drill. You will still miss most of them, because everyone does. But you will catch a few more than you would have, and a few more is the entire available win.
Stay steady. ⚔️
🔗 KEEP GOING
If today’s lesson hit, read this one next: Let the Day End.
