ALIVENESS
A practical philosophy for living fully in the awareness that life is finite.
We can unconsciously spend our precious time making decisions based from fear.
Arguably the most powerful man who ever lived understood this, from inside a plague-ridden war camp two thousand years ago.
Picture the absolute ruler of an empire of fifty million people. Armies at his command… cities bearing his name… his face on every coin.
Now picture this man alone in a military tent on a freezing frontier, a plague tearing through his ranks, writing private notes to himself by candlelight that he never intends anyone to read. These notes go on to influence millions of people over hundreds of years, and his ideas are still as relevant as ever.
That man was Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome. A bit like the reluctant character ‘Maximus’ from the film Gladiator, Marcus didn’t want the emperor job. He was pulled into power through adoption, and spent much of his twenty-year reign not in marble palaces but on the Danube, waging brutal war against Germanic tribes while the Antonine Plague killed scores of people.
His co-emperor died and his authority was challenged. He took up writing to steady his nerves and he wrote for an audience of one. Those notes survived by accident. We call them the ‘Meditations’, and people have turned to them for eighteen centuries.
One line is attributed to him above all others.
“It is not death that a man should fear. He should fear never beginning to live.” (Marcus Aurelius)
These words were written by a man surrounded by death every single day. There was plague in the camp, bodies on the battlefield and his own health failing.
He had every reason to fear dying. And yet, he’s telling himself the dying was never the thing to be afraid of. The real danger was reaching the end without having truly lived.
Here’s what I like so much about these words. Marcus was not obviously afraid of death, and when you look closer at your own life, it’s rarely death you’re actually avoiding. It’s something subtler… something that often seems responsible… and it’s called ‘postponement’.
I know this because I lived it. There was a period of about eighteen months when I was leading my company by day and secretly training as an end-of-life guide on the side.
I told almost no one what I was doing. I was terrified of being judged and of what people would think if they knew. I was worried if people found out the CEO was a death doula we’d lose sales. People would think I’d lost the plot, because in our world, death is the one subject you don’t raise. Even though it’s the only thing in life that’s guaranteed.
So I wore a mask to work every day. The ‘confident founder’, while the real me, the one being pulled toward mortality, presence, the things I actually cared about, stayed hidden underneath.
It made me physically and mentally ill. For weeks I sat in my car in the morning and cried before I could walk into the office, working the feelings out of my body so I could function, lead, be ‘responsible’.
I knew I had to change and yet, I delayed, and delayed, and delayed. Because I was scared. Not of death, but of being seen in my truth.
I believe this is the fear Marcus was pointing at. The fear of judgement, of stepping out of line, of being cast out for living as yourself. And these fears are astonishingly good at keeping us from ever beginning… which in turn keep us from really living.
What broke it for me was a casual curry night with very, very old friends. The kind of evening where you finally say the true thing. I told them how I felt going into work each day. And one of my friends simply said, “Mate… just change it.”
Boom. I drove home lighter than I’d been in a year. A few nights later, after practicing the Ultimate Meditation for several days, the whole path forward arrived in radical clarity: selling the house, taking the family around the world, stepping fully into this work. But it started with an ordinary sentence from someone who knew me and who I trusted.
Marcus Aurelius died in a military camp, far from home. But he had begun to live long before that, because he refused to let fear run the show, and he reminded himself, in the dark, what was actually worth being afraid of.
Most of us have the fear backwards. We’re frightened of the ending but I believe we should be far more frightened of never actually beginning.
One for your diaries
Friday 11th Sept, a live conversation with Jada Butler, author of Midlife Nomad. 7am PT / 10am ET / 3pm UK. Link is HERE, and will be sent out to all subscribers prior to call.
This week’s question:
Where are you wearing a mask, and what would it take to drop it?
Thank you for being here. Make the most of the time you have.
Live happy,
Hoppy
Tools / Essays / Events / Instagram / Manifesto / About
If this article landed with you, please share it with one person who needs it.
I am a former CEO, filmmaker, soul midwife and druidic bard. Several times in my life, I realised the life I was living no longer aligned with the person I had become. Each time, I found the courage to make a difficult decision, and each change led me closer to my purpose. I could never have imagined doing the work I do today. I created Aliveness with a dream that it becomes as impactful as Mindfulness: a daily practice that helps people live more bravely, leave fewer regrets and build a more present and generous world.
This hit me where I needed it to - thank you John!
I got your point, John. Aliveness is not about dying— it is about protecting us from regrets, which may come to us too late. Your newsletter is aimed to us who want to live following our own inner rhythm, and do net let circumstances and wishes of others to push us here and there through our life and at the end leave us longing, because we missed to be what we really are.