For it’s not death that upsets us but our judgments about it. Socrates did not fear death; he saw that it was neither good nor bad. On the morning of his execution, he casually informed his friends that philosophy is a lifelong meditation on our own mortality. True philosophers, he said, fear their own demise least of all men. For those who love wisdom above everything else are continually in training for the end. To practice death in advance is to practice freedom and to prepare oneself to let go of life gracefully.
