"Death smiles upon us all, ..." - Marcus Aurelius

"Death smiles on all of us, the only thing you can do is smile back."

Marcus Aurelius

The only thing that is certain for each of us is death. To enable us to deal with this very thing as healthily as possible, Marcus Aurelius left us a quote. It is useless to face the Grim Reaper broken and sorrowful. Death is inevitable and can therefore just as well be greeted with a smile.

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor and philosopher from 161 to 181 AD. He belonged to the Stoic school and wrote one of the most famous works of this philosophical school: The Meditations (or also called The Self-Reflections) . Due to his position as Roman emperor, he was also very capable militarily and strategically.

I have decided to deal with this quote, because we people of the West have a very negative relationship to death and I think that we generally deal with it very little. If the subject of death is also rather unpleasant to you, I believe that this quote can be of much use to you.

Every single one of us is certain of death, every single one of us smiles at death. But often we suppress this fact or deal with great fear, with the knowledge that we will die one day. This is also a completely natural view, after all, our life, apart from our earthly possessions, is the only thing we can call our own.

Marcus Aurelius tells us, however, that when death smiles at us, we should smile back, because no matter how we act, we cannot avoid the inevitable either way.

The problem with not fully accepting death is like catching your partner cheating on you and then convincing yourself it was just an accident.
At that moment, we lie to ourselves, and those who are not honest with themselves have a troublesome life ahead of them.

Personally, I believe that one should always direct one's words and actions, as far as possible, in the direction of truth.
However, I am also aware that you cannot always be honest with 100%.
But if there's one person you should be as honest as possible with, it's yourself.

So if we are honest with ourselves and look our mortality in the eye - we even have the guts to smile at our mortality - then we are smiling not only at death, but at every single day we live.

However, if you fear for your own end every day, you cannot enjoy the days you live to the fullest extent.

So think of your mortality, and if she's already smiling at you, you might as well give her the occasional wink.

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