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Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Day 142.

“The longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.14

Take a moment to reflect on today’s passage.

Let the logic of it settle before you try to follow it.

Marcus Aurelius is making a claim that sounds almost too simple to be worth saying: the person who lives ninety years and the person who lives thirty lose exactly the same thing when they die.

Not less. Not more. [...]

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