If we want to be the best we can be in every situation, if we want to live with areté, then we need to be aware of our every step. Today, we call this “mindfulness,” the Stoics used the term “attention” (prosochê). In the words of Marcus Aurelius, we should pay “vigorous attention . . . to the performance of the task in hand with precise analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice.” We can achieve such a mind free of other thoughts by performing “each action as if it were the last of your life.”
