If the real fear is never beginning to live, the natural next step is practical: how to begin now. In keeping with Stoic practice, one approach is a daily reflection: ask, as Marcus does, whether your actions today matched the person you wish to be. Another is the memento mori exercise, briefly recalling your mortality not to indulge dread, but to sharpen priorities. Small, concrete choices—having an honest conversation, pursuing a neglected interest, acting kindly when it is inconvenient—constitute the ‘beginning’ he describes. Over time, these choices accumulate into a life that can meet death, whenever it comes, without the sting of having never really begun. [...]
