So Sayeth Epicurus...

 

The great Greek philosopher Epicurus is credited with remarking; 'Why should I fear death? For when life is, death is not. When death is, then I am not. I shall not fear that which I know nothing.' 

Our existence is a puzzle and a mystery, but only if we choose to make it so. We spend half of our lifetime trying to figure out the why, what and how of our being and by the time we think we have it all figured out we realize that we spent our days in contemplation of something that always was and always will be forever fleeting. Time is a speeding horse that zips past our existence, never stopping for us or for anyone. If we could but control time we could possibly understand, but we don't understand anything, do we? Nay, this is the problem...we cannot control time, yet we attempt to do so, even though we know well our efforts will always fail because there will come a time inevitable when we will not be. Since this is the case, Epicurus says to abandon worrying about the inevitable. 

Indeed, the old Greek scholar suggested that every human being enjoy themselves and live a full life, pursuing and fulfilling those dreams and visions that arise from the realm of our consciousness. Like some ancient, mythical hero we should seek immortality by living this life and setting an example for others to live fully as well, and worrying not an iota about any other possible states of existence since such a dimension cannot be proven or explained logically. Life is merely the bridge to cross between birth and death, between our beginning and our finality. Or, shall we use the example of life and death as the bookends that support our lifetime, the book we compose which sits there upon the shelf? Like a spark flying out from a great fire we shoot into the night sky to be watched carefully by the onlookers sitting about the flames, awed by our magical dance. Then we flicker and wither away into the realm of imagination where the dreamers and the prophets, the artists and the soothsayers create and attempt to lure us into their various dimensions with poems and songs, spiritual faith or great works of sculpture or painting. But this is ok because imagination, like the flickering flame, entices and beautifies our world. All of this happens, according to Epicurus, during the epoch known as life, our lifetime, our state of being. 

Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is morally good and what is painful is morally evil. He idiosyncratically defined 'pleasure' as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning 'untroubledness', a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering. He argued that most of the suffering which human beings experience is caused by the irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife. Like in the observations of Buddha, Epicurus explained that people seek wealth and power on account of these fears, believing that having more money, prestige or political clout will save them from death. He, however, maintains that death is the end of existence, that the terrifying stories of punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions, and that death is therefore nothing to be feared.

He wrote:
'accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not.'
From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: 'Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo, translated as I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care.

There is a popular quote that has been attributed to Epicurus, though never actually proven to be his. Nonetheless, the quote represents Epirucus indeed, and like most of the quotes from those brilliant ancient Greek philosophers, it is to the point:

'Is divinity willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then divinity is not omnipotent. Is divinity able but not willing? Then divinity is malevolent. Is divinity both willing and able? If so, then whence cometh evil? Is divinity neither able nor willing? Then why label this entity as divine?'

So compose that song, paint the tales of champions upon urn, vase and canvas, sculpt and portray the beauty of the human being, the flowers of the fields or the trees of the forest, the mountains and volcanoes, the fury of nature, indeed capture all of it to retain for future generations. Live and love, passionately, for this existence is our time to dance, our  audition for the ballet called eternity. Future lives, many generations into the future from our own time perhaps will be enhanced by the choice we make today to live life, to its fullest. This is how the heroes and champions of the mythical past have been remembered. We too have the ability to be remembered and become another hero in an epic saga composed by our own being. We are all the composers of the stanzas of our lives and in so doing, we come to know the reason and purpose of our life. The mystery is solved, the questions are removed by reveling in the mystery. So sayeth Epicurus.