“Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of dying because I won’t be able to do this activity anymore?”
Marcus Aurelius wrote those words. He was Roman Emperor from 161 to 181 AD and kept a journal that became a wonderful book called Meditations.
Aurelius believed there was great value in assessing everything we do with a measurement of joy and meaning. And if an activity did not cross that threshold with the limited time we have in our lives, then to consider setting it aside. Aurelius wasn’t thinking of tasks we have to do to sustain our lives, but with the time we have remaining in a day, a week, a month, to ask how does our inevitable death help us to measure what matters.
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On Emotions 