"If it is now the time for me to die, I will die. If later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived, and dying I will tend to later."
Pretty interesting way to go about your day, isn't it?
Two opposites. Taking your lunch or considering that you might die.
It sounds dramatic at first. Almost absurd. But that's the point.
The Stoics had a way of cutting straight through such noise.
No fluff, no overthinking! Sure, it's not for everyone, but it helps provide a very clear lens on what actually matters and what doesn't.
If you're not familiar with it, Stoicism is an ancient philosophy focused on living with clarity, steadiness, and control over what actually matters. Your thoughts, actions, and responses! It's a way of disciplining the often-racing mind and developing ways to accept much of life that sits outside your control. Originating in ancient Greece and later developed in Rome by thinkers like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, it offers a practical framework for staying grounded, making better decisions, and navigating uncertainty without being overwhelmed.
I've chosen to start with this quote from Epictetus because, well, it isn't really about death at all.
Not in the way we usually think about such an important part of our life, and to me, no, it's not morbid, and it's not trying to provoke fear. It's actually doing the opposite. It's simplifying things.
"If it's time to die, I'll die. If it's not, I'll have lunch."
That's it.
But why would anyone even compare, consider or even equate the two?
Because what sits underneath this is the powerful idea that many things in life are completely outside of your control, and, likewise, many things are in control right in front of you.
In this instance, your lunch.
Sure, we live in a world saturated not just with noise, but with information. Constant updates, opinions, predictions, and possibilities. You can't log in to your Facebook, your Insta, or Reddit without being bombarded with a hundred different scenarios that, albeit foreign, are somehow also distinctly relevant to you.
So, because of this, we start to live as if everything deserves our attention. The big, existential questions, the unknowns, the "what ifs," and the future scenarios we run over and over in our heads all begin to carry the same weight. What is happening 10,000 kilometres away somehow feels as potent as something happening the very same in your very backyard. With the now global village we all live within, some matters remain deeply personal; our work, relationships, health, and sense of direction, whilst others sit much further out, things we consume, worry about, and carry despite having little to no influence over them.
But the kicker is that our mind doesn't always distinguish between what we can impact and what we can't. It treats everything as urgent, everything as something that should be figured out, anticipated, or controlled. And this is often where anxiety starts to take hold. Underneath it, there is usually not just fear, but a constant effort to stay ahead of what hasn't happened yet. The thinking goes that if we can run enough scenarios, prepare for enough outcomes, or stay alert to every possibility, we might be able to soften the blow or avoid it altogether.
On the surface, this feels logical, perhaps even responsible. But in practice, it pulls us away from where we actually are and places us in a future that doesn't exist yet. One that we find ourselves trying to manage without actually ever arriving. Over time, everything starts to feel important. Every thought, every possibility, every outcome carries weight, and there is no clear line between what matters now and what might matter later.
Epictetus recognised this.
He understood that when our attention drifts too far into what we can't control, we lose our footing in what's actually happening now. And in doing so, we miss the simple, immediate parts of life. In this case, lunch!
Of course, it's not because these "future events" aren't unimportant, but we need to compartmentalise and organise them as they come because we're too busy trying to manage everything else.
This is where a more grounded approach becomes useful.
I don't want to take away from the very real and serious things unfolding in the world right now. But not everything is yours to manage, and not everything requires your attention in this moment. Some things will unfold regardless of how much time you spend thinking about them. Stoic practice offers a way to return to what is actually in front of you. Not next week, not worst case, but right now. And in doing so, it creates a sense of steadiness because, more often than not, what is in front of you is, in fact, manageable.
It may seem overly simple, but it is real.
It's something we can work through together in practice... building the ability to notice where your attention is being pulled and gently bring it back to where your feet actually are.
Because sometimes, it's not about solving everything.
It's just about recognising, right now, it's lunch time.
This blog is written by John Reardon, Counsellor at Clear Ground Counselling in Berwick, Beaconsfield, Officer, Narre Warren & Southeast Melbourne. The reflections and ideas shared here are drawn from my own experience and perspective.