Meditations, Book 7, Section 15

Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

Is anyone foolish enough to fear change? Everything that exists came from change. What is more natural to the universe than this?

Think about it. You could not take your daily hot baths if the wood that heats them did not change by burning. You could not get nourishment from food if it did not change inside your body. Almost nothing useful happens without change.

So why can't you see that your own death is just another change? It is the same kind of natural process. The universe needs it to happen.

Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

Is any man so foolish as to fear change, to which all things that once were not owe their being? And what is it, that is more pleasing and more familiar to the nature of the universe? How couldst thou thyself use thy ordinary hot baths, should not the wood that heateth them first be changed? How couldst thou receive any nourishment from those things that thou hast eaten, if they should not be changed? Can anything else almost (that is useful and profitable) be brought to pass without change? How then dost not thou perceive, that for thee also, by death, to come to change, is a thing of the very same nature, and as necessary for the nature of the universe?