Everyone's life story is awaiting only the final page. In the beginning I found myself drawn toward writing about my life. Still, this blog has led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. What you're really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don't really exist and I might be gone at any given second.' Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that's not gonna happen. 'Ask someone how they feel about death,' he said, 'and they'll tell you everyone's gonna die. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.I don't expect to die anytime soon. This was originally sent on April 22, 2020. Or as Plutarch said of Cato : even if we can’t beat fate, we can “nevertheless give Fortune a hard contest.” He just thought we should fight hard, as Cato did, while we still can. No, Cato was such a fighter-had such life force-that even suicide could not take him on the first try.ĭeath wins over all of us, that is inevitable. When death first arrived to claim him, he would not simply follow. When Caesar wanted him to roll over, he would not be moved. He raged, raged against the dying of the light. Indeed, in his old age Cato embodied those beautiful lines in the Dylan Thomas poem : He did not go quietly into that good night. He refused to betray the Republic for which he had lived, even if that meant the loss of his life, though he fought like hell for years before it came to this. In a way, it was not really a choice at all. For him, the choice he faced was between living as Caesar’s slave-and propaganda tool-or dying as his own man. Cato had always fought for life, and especially so in death. In fact, Cato’s story shows a man who clung to life with almost superhuman tenacity.

The point of this story is not to glorify suicide, not at all. That would be how he died: literally disemboweling himself with his own hands. As they finished stitching him up, Cato awoke and began to tear the wound apart. Instead, Cato passed out and was soon discovered by his sons, who rushed in a doctor to save him. The wound should have been mortal, but even Roman steel could not kill Rome’s Iron Man. Reeling from the blow, Cato fell from the bench he had been leaning on. When Cato grabbed his sword and said, “Now I am my own master,” then plunged it into his chest, that should have been the end of any debate. But no one who ever met Cato, nor anyone who reads of his death, should see anything resigned in the man. In one sense, you might say he died willingly, as he chose death by his own hand rather than life under the tyranny of Julius Caesar. In April 46 BC, 1,974 years ago, Cato the Younger died.

Go quietly into the night