You Are Mortal. You Don’t Have To Be Stupid.

Yes, the Stoics talk a lot about death. How it’s inevitable . How life is fragile. How it can be taken from us at any moment. It’s in our power to live well, Seneca said , but not in our power to live long. It’s easy to take from these commentaries that the Stoics were completely fatalistic about their health, and that’s a mistake—one easily disproved by the evidence. Seneca talked about death, but he also talked about the life-giving powers of taking a cold plunge. He experimented with vegetarianism. He exercised. He ate moderately not only because it was part of his philosophy, but because he knew that gluttons rarely live to see old age. Marcus Aurelius was treated by the famous doctor Galen, and one presumes that he did so because he asked Galen to improve his health, not worsen it. The key exercise in Stoicism, according to Epictetus , was distinguishing what’s in our control and what isn’t. Our genetics are not in our control. But we are not prisoners of them. They are not an oracle. We control our diet and our exercise. We can control how our genetics express themselves and impact our live Death can be random and cruel—as it was for the millions who died of the plague in Mar…