Today could be our last
On Thanksgiving morning I drove my son to the airport. As he left to visit his father, who lives halfway across the country, I imagined I might never see him again.
Not because planes crash occasionally. Or because there have been a shocking number of mass shootings lately, including one last week an hour from our home. But because modern Stoics—like me, like you?—can train ourselves to appreciate life even more by imagining the end is nigh. And not just for turkeys on Thanksgiving.
The ancient Stoics showed us the way.
They never knew when they’d be shipped off to exile or taken prisoner by an opposing philosopher-ruler, so they regularly imagined losing what they had. Through negative visualization—or last-time meditation—they appreciated everything more.
Last-time meditation is the perfect gratitude practice for our time. Because we have so much. And we never know when things may change.
Three years ago, I rode my scooter to a meeting on a sunny fall day. I didn’t know I’d have an accident and never ride again.
The last time I saw my father—or spoke to him on the phone—I didn’t know it was the last. Or that ten years later, the same thing would be true of my mother.
And I can’t even count the number of last kisses I didn’t know were the last.
If I’d known the emptiness that was to come, I would have savored everything more.
How can we visualize the negative? Without losing the positive?
Like everything else worth doing, it takes practice!
Pretend it’s the end. We usually don’t know we’re waterskiing for the last time, or doing our last flip turn in the pool, or running for the last time on the beach before the dog is dead. But we can pretend. We can weather the nasty downpour if we imagine the band we’re seeing might never perform again. Or, for some reason, that live concert might be the last one we ever attend.
Temporarily abstain. The Stoic philosopher Seneca was really rich, but he occasionally left his wealth behind to wander in simplicity. The author and podcaster Tim Ferris periodically swears off food or sex or other things to intentionally reset his brain and his body. Taking breaks is hard, but after a break from wine or chocolate or Bumble, I do enjoy those things even more.
Reset your last time. Think of something you haven’t done in a really long time. Something you miss. If you do it again—do it now—you can reset your last-time clock. It’s been some 40 years since I’ve seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show in a crowded theater at midnight. Suddenly, I’ve got the urge to pack up some rice and playing cards and bits of hot dog, and throw it at a screen. Where’s the margin in putting that off? I have to find a way.
The other day, I was weeding through old files. In a packet of poems I wrote for a class, more than twenty years ago, found one called Thirsty. It was a last-time meditation, before I knew there was such a thing.
The poem ended like this:
and then you will wait—
for the last
few sips
that will
have to
hold you,
hold me,
for the rest
of our days.
I wrote that long before the baby at my breast traveled alone. Before he deep-sea dived or jumped off of cliffs. Before I spent Thanksgivings with friends instead of family.
Life is short, my friends. But that’s not such a bad thing, is it?
As long as we know it now.
