Day 5: Death Will Take Everything Away From You.

7 Days of Joyful Stoic Death Writing. It's Demystifying Death Week this 5-11 May.

Welcome to ‘7 Days of Joyful Stoic Death Writing’ for Scotland’s Demystifying Death Week, 5-11 May 2025. Each day this week, I’m contemplating and writing in response to meditations on death drawn from ancient Stoic philosophy. I’ll share a daily meditation, offer an invitation for reflection, and invite you to join the conversation in the comments.

Original artwork created for my 28 Days of Joyful Stoic Death Writing programme by Stella Sevastopoulos; expanded to landscape with AI.

Dear You —

Τί ἐπιζητεῖς; τὸ διαπνεῖσθαι; ἀλλὰ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι; τὸ ὁρμᾶν;

What do you want? To keep breathing? To keep feeling? To keep wanting?

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.31

What do you want? To keep breathing? To keep feeling? To keep wanting? To keep growing? To stop growing? To keep speaking, thinking?

Is this what makes life worth living? Is this what it’s all about?

What happens if you follow your reason?

What if you fight against your wanting these things?

What if you fight against your feeling so weighed down about these things because death will take everything away from you.

Henrietta at Cairnryan Cemetery, Scotland. © Kathryn Koromilas.

I often catch myself wanting, desiring, longing to keep on living and breathing and thinking and feeling — forever.

Notice, however, how quickly he thinks through this to arrive at a reframe; a deep acceptance of reality and an alternative he can live with, must live with.

The alternative is to use his reason to strip away his illogical longing.

The only thing we can count on is our capacity for reason.

Thinking clearly about things helps us focus on how we ought to live right now, in the present moment. As social creatures, this means to live well with others. This brings joy.

In Meditations, Book 8.26, Marcus Aurelius says:

Joy for humans lies in human actions. Human actions: kindness to others.

So, today, I invite you to join me in letting go of all the unreasonable wants about future life and focus on action — human action — in the present moment.

Invitations

If you have 5 minutes

• Read the above meditation out loud.

• Write down (or memorise) a single keyword or phrase to capture this meditation.

• Two or three times during the day, repeat this keyword or phrase.

If you have 10 minutes

• The above, plus ‘copywork’; your meditative writing practice: In your journal, in lovely, slow, intentional writing, copy out the meditation, word for word.

• Try recalling this meditation throughout the day.

If you have 30-60 minutes

• The above, plus ‘free write’: Explore further, allow your pen to stay moving on the page. Set a timer for 3 or 5 or 8 minutes. What comes up for you? What are the things in life you want to hold on to?

• When the timer goes off, take a break. Then, return and reconsider your word choices and imagery, and shape into a form that is pleasing to you.

• An alternative to the free write is to:

  • Summarise the meditation into bullet points.

  • Reformulate (reexpress/rewrite) the meditation using your own words and voice (but don't change the teaching).

• And, how about a poetic prompt?

  • Use the questions in the meditation to create a poem.

  • Write a series of couplets: each couplet might include a question and an answer.

  • In the final couplet, reframe with a helpful Stoic statement.

At the end of your writing session, close your journal. Take a deep breath, stretch, put some music on, walk, dance, do something comforting.

Here’s some music to inspire you. This playlist was co-created by participants in a previous version of Joyful Death Writing. Enjoy!

🪦 Finally, remember: Two or three times during the day, just as you are about to enjoy something or someone you love, say this to yourself: "Tomorrow, you will die."

And you’re done!

We’ll meet again tomorrow (fate permitting). 💙

Meet me in the comments

Come on into the comments section and share your writing or anything else that came up for you. I don’t think we can share images in the comments, but if you’d like to share pages from your journal, maybe share as a Substack note and tag me there and/or link in the comments. Remember, the 7 Days are open to all subscribers, so take care with what you are sharing. I encourage you to read and respond to others too. I’ll see you there.

Memento mori,