“Both Alexander the Great and his mule-keeper were brought to the same place by death — they were either received into the all-generative reason, or scattered among the atoms.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.24
There is a grand spectrum of experiences one could have on this Earth. You could be filthy rich, or you could be destitute — the gulf between rich and poor has never been so great as it is now.
You could find yourself at the pinnacle of power and influence, or you could clean bathrooms for a living. You might become a professional athlete, or you could resign yourself to being a couch potato. You might spend your life being admired for your good looks, or perhaps fate has decided you’ll be homely and unattractive.
There’s one thing for certain though — in the end we are all laid low by mortality. There’s no escaping it, no matter how much money you have. We don’t know when it’s coming; it could even be soon.
Heck, we don’t even know what death is like… we can speculate, but nobody knows for sure. But we do know that we’re all going to die, and that’s a fact. And when that Sword of Damocles falls — that’s it, goodbye cruel world!
In the end, when we’re dead, we’re all made the same. Whether a great emperor or a lowly mule-keeper, we are all the same in the afterlife. “No one is better, no one is worse,” as author Ryan Holiday says in today’s entry in The Daily Stoic. We are all conquered in the end by death, the great equalizer.
