“It is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live.”
-Marcus Aurelius
This quote from Marcus Aurelius is thought provoking and frankly quite scary, why? Because his words cut deep in the human framework. Lately, sleep has been a fight for me, there have been a lot of dreams that take place in the spiritual realm. For those that don’t know much about me, I consider myself to be a religious person, despite my imperfections and the many-a-time that I’ve wandered from the path.
As a religious person, the reality of death frightens me at times, even though I believe that I am eternally secure in Gods grace. The stoics spoke of death more than most because many of us run from the fear of death itself. We try and remove the fear of death from our minds by filling our minds with more busy times. And yet, time is passing, and we are growing older with time.
Have you begun to live?
How do we begin to define living?
Personally, in my heart of hearts I’ve felt like I haven’t begun to live. Not even come close what I want to accomplish in life. The People that I want to try and help, the legacy that my heart desires to live. We put some much time into earthly things, thinking that they will bring lasting hope and significant, but they won’t nor will they ever. There was a movie producer once, that became so addicted and driven by money, that he kept saying to himself “one more million and I’ll be happy.” Was he? No, in fact even sadder his fat was a cold and dark one.
I fear the worst of what God would say to me, upon seeing him in eternity… Him asking me: “Brandon, what did you do with the time I gave you?” And my fearful response would be, “Not much my king.”
“For I didn’t make the most of the time and chances given to me.”
brandonleeryan 