Act as though departure is already possible
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Ὡς ἤδη δυνατοῦ ὄντος ἐξιέναι τοῦ βίου, οὕτως ἕκαστα ποιεῖν καὶ λέγειν καὶ διανοεῖσθαι. τὸ δὲ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀπελθεῖν, εἰ μὲν θεοὶ εἰσίν, οὐδὲν δεινόν· κακῷ γάρ σε οὐκ ἂν περιβάλοιεν· εἰ δὲ ἤτοι οὐκ εἰσὶν ἢ οὐ μέλει αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀνθρωπείων, τί μοι ζῆν ἐν κόσμῳ κενῷ θεῶν ἢ προνοίας κενῷ;
Act, speak, and think in every matter as though it were already possible for you to depart from life. And as for leaving the company of men behind — if gods exist, there is nothing dreadful in it, for they would never wrap you in any harm; but if either they do not exist, or take no care for human affairs, what is it to me to go on living in a world empty of gods, or empty of providence?
Marcus turns the thought of imminent death into a practical rule for every action, then closes with a theological dilemma that makes death harmless either way — whether or not the gods exist or care.
Marcus opens with a discipline rather than a doctrine: treat every act, word, and thought as if departure from life were already within reach. It is the same imaginative exercise he returns to elsewhere — 4.17's warning that one is always on the verge of leaving, 2.1's dawn rehearsal of the day's irritations — but here it is stated as a method, not a mood. The genitive absolute (δυνατοῦ ὄντος) keeps the possibility hypothetical, a premise to reason from rather than a fact to dread; the aim is not morbidity but attention, the sharpening that comes from acting as though nothing beyond this moment is guaranteed.
The second half turns that same imagined departure into a small piece of natural theology, built as a clean dilemma: if gods exist, they will not have wrapped you in harm, so leaving holds no terror; if they do not exist, or take no interest in human affairs, then a world empty of gods or of providence is not one worth clinging to in any case. What is worth noticing is the hedge itself — εἰ μὲν... εἰ δὲ... — from a writer who elsewhere states cosmic providence as settled fact (6.44, 12.5). For one sentence Marcus lets both branches of the argument stand on their own, as if the discipline of accepting death held good whether or not the universe turns out to care.
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