Wrestling with Nostalgia
While Socrates anticipated his death penalty in a prison cell, his students were bewildered as to how their teacher could remain so calm in the face of such a terrifying situation. The great philosopher’s reply was equally mystifying as it was straightforward: those who are wise prepare their whole lives for death, and so, they have nothing to fear when that time finally comes.
Though the notion that we should spend our days preoccupied with death may seem morbid at first, an honest reflection of our finite existence reveals that properly confronting it is necessary for living a fulfilling life: spend too much of your time hiding from death and you might miss out on appreciating how valuable your short time in this world really is, but spend too much of your time obsessing over it and you might spend your days paralyzed by fear, too jaded to leave the house.
And yet there’s a subtler interpretation of Socrates’ advice that provides a more interesting layer to it. Beyond the literal end of life, the death and rebirth of the self are constantly experienced through the numerous changes and transformations that occur within a lifetime. From our current state we can look back at story-like snippets of the past, happily observing different versions of ourselves, places we haven’t been in years, and friends whose presence in our lives faded with time. Accompanying the immediate…
