Yet watch these same people when they get sick. They beg their doctors on their knees, terrified of dying. If they face criminal charges, they'll give away everything they own just to stay alive. How contradictory they are! If you could see exactly how many years you have left — the way you can count the years you've already lived — wouldn't you panic if the number was small? Wouldn't you desperately try to make the most of every remaining year? It's easy to budget something when you know exactly how much you have. But the thing you should guard most carefully is the thing that might run out at any moment — and you have no idea when.
Yet you will see these same people clasping the knees of their physician as suppliants when they are sick and in present peril of death, and if threatened with a capital charge willing to give all that they possess in order that they may live: so inconsistent are they. Indeed, if the number of every man's future years could be laid before him, as we can lay that of his past years, how anxious those who found that they had but few years remaining would be to make the most of them? Yet it is easy to arrange the distribution of a quantity, however small, if we know how much there is: what you ought to husband most carefully is that which may run short you know not when.