Even if you are going to live three thousand years, or as many times ten thousand years, remember that no man loses any other life than the one which he now lives, or lives any other life than the one he now loses. The longest and shortest are then to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future — for if you do not have it, how can anyone take it? Bear these two things in mind: all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.
Meditations, 2. 14

Marcus was obsessed with Death and deals with it repeatedly throughout the mediations. Here, he takes an almost Buddhist view of it –be here now and all that. Do not mourn an unknown future, or a past already lived. What you have, what you can control, is today. Focus on this, and you need not fear death, because today is all anyone ever has.

Ok, fine, cool story bro. But as I’ve struggled with in many of these annotations, this radical insistence on the present isn’t practical. If I do not look forward to an old age I may not have, I cannot prepare for it. If I fail to prepare, I will fail to survive.
Herein lies one of the central contradictions in stoicism. It insists on controlling the moment, but if we fail to look past the moment, we’re doomed. Wrestling with this contradiction, finding the right balance, will be a subject of many, many of these annotations.