Letter 61

Let us cease to will what we have willed. I at least am doing this: as an old man I have ceased to will the things I willed as a boy. To this one end the days go, to this the nights; this is my work, this my meditation: to set an end to old faults. I am at pains to make each day stand for a whole life. And, by Hercules, I do not snatch at it as though it were my last, but I look upon it as one that might even be the last.

In this spirit I write you this letter — as though death were going to call me away at the very moment of writing. I am ready to depart, and therefore I enjoy life, because I do not hang too anxiously on how long this is going to last. Before old age I took care to live well; in old age, to die well; and to die well is to die gladly. Take pains never to do anything unwillingly.

Whatever is going to be necessary to one who resists is no necessity to one who is willing. So I say: he who receives commands gladly escapes the bitterest part of slavery — to do what he does not wish. The man is not wretched who does something because he is bidden, but the one who does it unwillingly. Let us therefore so compose the mind that we may will whatever the situation demands, and above all that we may think of our own ending without sadness.

We must be prepared for death before we are for life. Life is furnished well enough, but we are greedy for its furnishings; something seems to us to be lacking, and always will seem so. It is neither years nor days that make us to have lived enough, but the mind. I have lived, dearest Lucilius, as much as was enough; full, I await death. Farewell.