"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly." - Marcus Aurelius

The other day at an industry get-together, my old teammate from my 2004 Iraq deployment, Jim Erwin, and I were having a conversation about that trip. We were laughing and joking about all of our close calls, and Jim compared one to the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction where Travolta and Jackson somehow impossibly survive an ambush at close range and liken it to divine intervention. Don’t get me wrong, Jim and I enjoy our memories from that trip. The laughter and joking is real, but so is the reality of it. We almost died but beat the odds many times together.

The Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius famously talked about considering yourself as already dead in order to divest yourself of ego and attachment. For many in the modern age this may seem morbid or fatalistic, but it’s actually the opposite. What does this mean then? What lessons can it teach us?

Every day is a gift. That’s a cliche, a platitude. Dismissed by most. It’s also true. No one lives forever, and few choose the time and manner of their passing. We can rail against the random capriciousness of death, or we can choose to truly live. Every day, every hour, every minute that we are given should be put to good use. This isn’t a license to not strive for improvement or work hard. It’s an admonition to never take any of it for granted.

I’ve had many close calls in the years since, but in 1999 I almost died in Honduras. Nothing glorious, an accident during a mission mostly spent training locals and doing sick calls in remote villages. Most of the significant achievements of my life came after that. Once I seriously started looking into stoicism and zen, I consciously adopted the perspective that my life had ended that day, and that every day after was a bonus day, a gift from the universe. Knowing that each day is extra, how do I use that bonus time? How do I live each day to the fullest?

That mental exercise has stood me in great stead down through the years. I’ve had many close calls, and managed to achieve many goals. I’ve also had setbacks and defeats. At this writing, I’m beginning a long course of physical therapy and resharpening skills after my joint implant got infected and I landed in the hospital. If I was attached to things as they were before this latest setback, this event beyond my control could easily be upsetting. Instead, learning to look at each day as extra time, instead of time I’m owed, allows me to enjoy this process almost as much as enjoying when I’m on top of my game.

Zen scholars attribute emotional suffering to attachment. A desire for the world to be what you want it to be rather than what it is. The stoics talked at length about the only variable truly in our control was how we react to reality, and that reacting with negative emotions to events we cannot change does us nothing but harm. This simple truth is one of the keys in my opinion to living an authentic and rich life.

This doesn’t mean we don’t set goals or want certain outcomes. Far from it. In a few short months I plan on being a better athlete and shooter than I was before this setback. What it does mean is that with a simple perspective shift, we can learn to enjoy the process of self improvement for its own sake, rather than being discouraged or despondent if goals prove illusive or if we suffer setbacks in our path. To use modern psychological parlance rather than the ancient philosophical ones, this simple mental exercise gives us a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. Divesting ourselves of our attachments to how things should be gives us the power to change ourselves in ways we never could otherwise.