Premeditatio Malorum

How to appreciate the things you care about by thinking about losing them

Premediatatio Malorum or, the pre-meditation of evils is an exercise coined by the Stoics on how to prepare for life's trials and tribulations, and however drab this exercise may seem it certainly has its values.

Last week I was having a bit of a shit day at work. Something important needed to be done where I've been acting as an intermediary (middleman) that wasn’t being done. I couldn’t do what needed to be done because a) it can’t be done by me and, b) it’s a specialist job. The frustration grew and grew and grew as this had been going on for weeks. It directly impacted the job I was doing, and I was stuck in limbo until this had been completed.

I’ve read bits and bobs over the years from the Stoics as well as listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos from various people and I’ve always been drawn to Stoicism. Not in the dogmatic sense but I’d say I find most of it worthwhile enough to think about and practice when I can. On this particular day on the drive home, the idea of pre-meditation of evils crept into my mind.

I was stuck in traffic alongside the local hospital which was having a major upgrade. There was an extension being built alongside the pre-existing, old traditional building and I just thought how odd it looked. How glaringly obvious it was that they were two separate things pretending to be one. There probably were planning stipulations for altering the existing building. It may even be listed but no attempt seems to have been made to try to blend them together. This was almost certainly an architect’s grab to make something new entirely.

Uncalled for I said to myself in annoyance that it doesn’t matter anyway, it’ll be knocked down in 100 years or so. A few generations. Then I looked at the car in front of me. I thought about what would happen to all the steel and other components of that car in the same timeframe. Where would they end up? Would the steel be recycled into another car or some other use? What would happen to the seats and the tires? Who knows for sure, but that car was destined one day, to be that car no more. I thought about the road I was stuck on, limping forward and about how it would look after 10 years if we all ceased to exist at that instance. I thought about a documentary I watched about Chernobyl and how the city had turned lush green and was rife with local wildlife. Could that happen here? A swarm of green overtakes the road. Trees and bushes rise and what used to be a road that had 1000s of cars pass by every single hour was no more.

I had no intention of thinking like this, it was just a thought that came into my mind and got carried away, but I thought about my day after it and it seemed insignificant. Why did I care so much, especially about something that I had little control over?

My mood changed again early the next morning when my dad abruptly texted the family chat to tell us he was putting the family dog, Molly, down. My first response was to ask him why, but I already knew why he had to. She was nearly 18 and for some time now she’d been on a downward trajectory. The final straw was not eating or drinking and unable to take herself to the bathroom. It must have been a horrendous decision to have to come to terms with let alone make but it absolutely was the right one. If only humans could be offered the same dignity.

My mind began to drift for the rest of the day to when we first got her as a pup. I lived a 30-second walk from the high school I used to go to, and I used to spend my dinner breaks at home playing with her. Our other dog at the time Leroy impregnated Molly fairly early and after giving birth I was the only person in those first few days she would let near them or her. I remember how she used to come into my bed after my dad left for work and tucked herself behind my knees.

I’d decided I wanted to be there at the vets to see her one last time.

The mood was obviously sombre, and she was wrapped in her blanket receiving copious amounts of attention from myself, mum and dad. When it was time to take her in the mood got even worse and tears began to run from my mum and dad's faces. When they did inject her, she was standing on the bed and very slowly she just collapsed, and it was all over.

I’d never physically seen anyone or anything die before my eyes before, and it won’t be something I’ll want to revisit anytime soon. It was a soul-crushing, devastatingly easy thing to have been taken away so easily. I tried to keep myself together for my dad because I knew how much pain he was in, but I no longer could.

As I was looking at Molly on the bed asleep it dawned on me that I’d have to make that same decision my dad just made one day, and I too would be in just as much pain as my mum and dad were right now. That was because of a little friend called Roo. Or Rufus on Sundays.

Roo’s a Cavapoo and he’s my wife and I’s best friend. People who aren’t dog lovers need to reassess their lives but for those who are, or those who love pets in general you know that they can offer you something no other living thing can. And you’d know that the love you have for them is in every inch of your body and soul. It hurts to think about how much you love them.

Now this post has gone off on a bit of a tangent about my love for dogs but on the drive home, I couldn’t help but think about Roo and about the fact that one day he won’t be here and if I’m lucky enough to have had him for as long as we had Molly that the decision to let him go might fall on me and my wife’s. He’s 7 this year and it’s gone in a flash. Suddenly my mind ran wild with guilt, have I played with him enough? Walked him enough? Loved him enough? How much more time have I got with him? What if it’s not 17 years like Molly? Obviously, this was upsetting. I’d just seen Molly be put down and now I was thinking about the thing (joint with my wife) I love the most dying too!

It was a fairly long drive home, about 30 minutes and I wasn’t in a rush. I needed to think this through.

By thinking about Roo dying (pre-meditation of evils) I suddenly felt compelled to try to love him even more. To cuddle him more that night. We went to Scotland that weekend for his first ‘overseas’ trip (technically it isn’t overseas, but you get my drift) and we didn’t leave each other's side all weekend. We saw some Lochs, went on some walks, went out for some food and stopped over in a haunted hotel.

It shouldn’t take a moment such as a loss to come to terms with how important something is for us but unfortunately, at times it does. Life is so busy, all the time and romance, friendships, and commitments can fall by the wayside. It’s not that you don’t care but it’s so much harder to make the effort than it is to not make it. Maybe this is why the Stoics practiced Premeditatio Malorum so much. Maybe it was just them putting the things that mattered the most to them in perspective.

So, although the exercise might make you feel uncomfortable and even upset (if it makes you happy then you need to leave the relationship like yesterday!) it can help us in several ways. It can help us put our shitty day into context. How important is anything other than family, friendships, love, clarity, peace of mind, being content or of not wanting? It can also put the things in our life that we do care about front and centre of our perspective. To feel compelled to make that extra effort because you know that one day you won’t be able to.

“That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”

Marcus Aurelius