Run Down The List. Where Are They Now?

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1:26Run down the list. Where are they now? It's been generations upon generations now. For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have been doing the same things as the Stoics observed. They've been chasing power and fame. They've been accumulating stuff. They've been arguing over trivial things. They've been trying to impress other people. Where are those people now? Marcus Aurelius asks in an important passage in Meditations, where are they now? Run through the list, he tells himself. Run through the list of the big, powerful, historical figures you knew personally. Where are they now? Gone.

2:08Already forgotten. Already worm food. He dismisses many of these figures, perhaps alluding to Hadrian or Nero or Caligula as people who worked in vain, who failed to do what they should have. He sees this all as very tragic, that they were fixed on the wrong things, that they tried to find satisfaction in the wrong things. If we run down a version of this list ourselves, we'll find the same thing. How many pro athletes from our youth are already old, forgotten, or in some cases broke? What happened to the vice president when you were born? Do you even know who it was? What about the top 10 people on the Forbes list from 15 years ago?

2:52What about that jerk you used to work with? Life is very brief. It's far too brief to spend it chasing the wrong things, to be attentive to the wrong things. It's too short to spend it the way too many people do, which is to say, and as Mark Sreelius does say in meditations, unthinkingly plotting, flattering, seeking, arguing, and throwing parties. Don't waste what's left of your life, as Marcus put it. Spend it on what matters to you before you become just another forgotten name on someone else's forgotten list.

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