Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage

In the solemn and luminous words of Seneca, the philosopher of Rome, there breathes a truth both tranquil and defiant: “Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life.” These words, spoken more than two thousand years ago, are not the utterance of despair, but of freedom—the serene declaration of a soul that has mastered fear. In them, Seneca reveals the essence of Stoic philosophy: that while life is a gift of nature, death is its completion, and the wise man neither flees it nor trembles before it, but chooses it with reason, as one chooses the means of any great journey.

Seneca, tutor and counselor to Emperor Nero, lived in an age when philosophy was not an idle pursuit, but a shield against tyranny and chaos. His life, filled with honor and peril, tested his teachings to the utmost. When Nero’s madness turned against him, Seneca was ordered to die—a command the philosopher met without bitterness. He opened his veins calmly, as though stepping aboard the vessel he had long prepared for his final voyage. His words about choosing death were not abstract; they were a mirror of his destiny, a reflection of his belief that to die well is the last duty of the wise. He had long taught that the fear of death is the root of all bondage, and that the soul that accepts its mortality becomes truly free.

To understand his meaning, we must grasp what he meant by choice. Seneca did not advocate rash self-destruction, nor did he scorn the sanctity of life. Rather, he saw death as part of the natural order, something that should be faced with the same deliberation with which one faces any other great undertaking. The man who spends his days in fear of the inevitable lives as a slave to chance and fortune. But the man who regards death as an event under his own command—one that may be met with courage, dignity, and purpose—has conquered the final tyranny of fate. In this, Seneca stands as one of the ancients who sought not to escape death, but to master it through understanding.

The ancients often spoke of life as a voyage across a vast and uncertain sea. In this imagery, Seneca likens death to the ship that carries the traveler from one shore to another. Some ships are swift, others slow; some sail in calm waters, others through storm. Yet the wise traveler does not lament the voyage—he simply chooses his vessel with care and steadiness of heart. To him, the end of life is not an abyss but a departure—a continuation of the great journey of the soul. In this way, Seneca reminds us that dying well is not about how one ends, but about how one has lived—with honor, balance, and inner peace.

Consider the story of Socrates, another sage who met death with calm and grace. Condemned unjustly to drink the hemlock, he used his final hours not to plead for mercy, but to teach his disciples one last lesson: that death is no evil to the virtuous. When the poison reached his heart, he spoke of it as a liberation of the soul from the body. Like Seneca, Socrates understood that death chosen in wisdom is not surrender but sovereignty. His composure at the moment of death gave courage to generations after him, showing that the power of reason can transform fear into serenity.

From such examples we learn that to choose one’s death is not only to decide how one leaves the world, but to live in such a way that death, when it comes, finds us unafraid. The man who has lived with purpose has already rehearsed his departure many times: in every act of letting go, in every acceptance of change, in every moment of surrender to what cannot be controlled. Seneca’s teaching is thus not morbid—it is liberating. To be mindful of death is to live more wisely, to measure one’s days not by length but by depth, not by abundance but by virtue.

So, my child of tomorrow, take this lesson to heart: live as though you were always preparing for a great voyage. Build your ship with courage, truth, and kindness. Do not fear the sea, nor the storms that may come, for they are part of the journey. And when the hour comes to depart, may you, like Seneca, choose your death not with trembling, but with peace—knowing that you have lived as nature intended: freely, fearlessly, and with a soul untamed by the dread of the inevitable.

For in the end, the wise do not seek to escape death—they seek to meet it with honor, as one meets a familiar companion at the close of a long and worthy life. And when that moment arrives, it will not be an ending, but a return to the eternal order from which all things have come.