The Stoics would always say, one must think death is imminent, but it was less to prepare for death than it was to discover the seriousness of life. Marcus Aurelius, for example, as a Stoic, said, one must undertake every action as though it were one’s last; or again, one must spend every day as though it were one’s last. It’s a matter of becoming aware that the moment one is still living has infinite value. Because death may interrupt it, it is a matter of living in an extremely intense manner as long as death has not arrived.
–Pierre Hadot, The Present Alone is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson
