“Death is not terrible, for if it were, it would have appeared so to Socrates.”Epictet · Manualul · 125 · capitolul 21
The argument is an empirical test: do not ask what you feel, but what the best available example showed. Socrates, condemned to death, spoke calmly with his friends until the final moment; if death were intrinsically terrible, it would have shown in the clearest thinker. The conclusion: the terror comes not from death but from our judgment of it, and so it can be corrected. Someone awaiting a diagnosis can lean on this precedent rather than on their own panic.
Why it matters An anchor for thinking about death and diagnoses: your terror is not a measurement of reality but a reversible judgment.