Apple Podcasts 
Spotify Most of my listeners are somewhere between 35 and 45, which means quite a few of us are reaching the age when mortality starts feeling a little less theoretical. In this episode, I explore one reason the idea of death can trouble us that has less to do with fear and more to do with something deeply human: the desire not to feel disposable.
Apply for private coaching: https://stoicismpod.com/apply
Join my free community: https://stoicismpod.com/join
I begin with a conversation I recently had with a private coaching client about why believing in something after death can be comforting. My suggestion was that the comfort may not necessarily come from imagining rewards, avoiding punishment, or even continuing our conscious existence. It may come from believing that we remain important to something beyond ourselves, that we continue to have a place.
Stoicism offers an interesting answer to this without requiring a supernatural afterlife. The Stoics understood the Cosmos itself as God: the complete, contained system of Nature of which every one of us is presently a part.
Within that system, nothing simply disappears. The matter and energy that presently constitute us return to the Cosmos and continue participating in it. The individual person, with their name, memories, career, possessions, and personality, may not continue indefinitely, but that from which the individual is constituted remains part of the whole.
In that limited but meaningful sense, I suggest there is something resembling immortality available within the Stoic worldview. Stoicism doesn't promise a celestial city, an eternity spent with deceased relatives, or reincarnation as some other creature. Instead, it offers the idea that we were never separate from the Cosmos in the first place, and that what constitutes us continues to belong to and participate in that same whole.
If what troubles you about death is the thought of becoming irrelevant or disposable, perhaps there's some comfort in that. You aren't something the Cosmos eventually throws away. You are part of it now, and what constitutes you remains part of it after the particular arrangement presently called "you" is gone.
Mentioned in this episode:
Equanimity Talk
Attend the equanimity talk by visiting the link below. I want to make it clear that this was very last minute, that I don't know this organiser particularly well, and that there's no financial incentive involved here. I was simply presented an opportunity to speak on equanimity and thought it might be worthwhile. Cheers.