"Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or
ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than
the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one
you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the
shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the
same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant
is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the
future; how could you lose what you don’t have?
Remember two things:
i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps
recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see
the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred,
or in an infinite period;
ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest
lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give
up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have,
you cannot lose."
(Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations" 2:14)
