Most of us fear death, but some of us claim that we don’t. Whether you do or don’t, that’s besides the point. The point is, we don’t want to die without feeling complete or satisfied with what we were able to do with the time we had. We commonly hear the phrase,
“Life is short,”
yet most of us spend it so irresponsibly. When we’re 20, we think, “Oh, I’ve got 20, or 30, or 40 plus years to sober up.” And then in that moment, life doesn’t feel so short until an elderly man, who’s standing in line right behind you at the checkout counter, hears you and laughs hysterically and tells you he was 20 just yesterday.
But we don’t have to listen to that old man.
Take it from Seneca The Younger, a Roman stoic philosopher.
In his book, On the Shortness of Life, he says, “It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it's been given to us in generous measure for accomplishing the greatest things, if the whole of it is well invested.”
It’s hard to disagree with this view. Many of us have been there when a professor tells us that in a week from now, we’ll have our first exam. One day goes by, you still haven’t prepared. Then two, three, four, and so on, until the day before the exam. You spend that whole day up until the night watching one episode of Stranger Things on Netflix, promising yourself just one … and then two, then three, and it felt like almost no time had passed. Your three hours of enjoyment felt short and unfulfilling. Eventually, you hunker down and study all through the night. You realize there’s so much content to study, there’s no way you’re going to be able to get through all of it in one night. Time flew. You wasted so much time, you didn’t pay attention to how much of it had gone to waste. If you had spent at least one hour everyday studying for that exam, then that one week you had to prepare for that exam would have felt fulfilling- that it was ample time to study and that you had made the most of it.
This is what Seneca is telling us, but in the broader perspective of life. He goes on to say that people are frugal and quick to guard their property, that they are unwilling to spend their money, “but to how many people each of us shares out his life!” When it comes to wasting time, they are the most wasteful of the one thing in which it is respectable to be greedy.
You could waste an hour listening to a pessimistic person telling you how stupid something is, or you could spend that time with someone who you love, who will provide you with happiness and make you feel great the whole day, thus empowering you to make even better usefulness of your time.
To save this post from getting too long, I’d like to bullet some points Seneca made in his writing. I didn’t make it through the whole text, but I will highlight what I’ve read so far.
- “You'll hear many say: "After my fiftieth year I'll retire to a life of leisure; my sixtieth year will bring release from all my duties." And what guarantee, may I ask, do you have that your life will last longer? Who will allow those arrangements of yours to proceed according to plan? Are you not ashamed to keep for yourself only the remnants of your existence, and to allocate to philosophical thought only that portion of time which can't be applied to any business? How late it is to begin living just when life must come to an end! What foolish obliviousness to our mortality to put off wise plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to want to begin life from a point that few have reached!”
- “The divine Augustus, to whom the gods gave more than to any man, never ceased to pray for rest for himself and to seek release from the affairs of state. Every conversation of his kept coming back to this theme, that he was hoping for leisure; he would relieve his toils with this sweet, even if illusory, consolation, the thought that one day he would live for himself.”
Augustus sent a letter to the senate describing that leisure was something he desired so much, but because he couldn’t enjoy it in reality, he took pleasure in the thought of it. For men who are preoccupied, living is their least important activity.
- “But the person who devotes every second of his time to his own needs and who organizes each day as if it were a complete life neither longs for nor is afraid of the next day. For what new kind of pleasure is there that any hour can now bring?”
- “So there's no reason to believe that someone has lived long because he has gray hair and wrinkles: he's not lived long but long existed.”
- “Life is divided into three parts: past, present, and future. Of these, the present is brief, the future doubtful, the past certain.”
For a text written in 49 AD, Seneca’s wisdom couldn’t be even more relevant today with the even greater things that we have to eat up our time.
Quiz:
1. What kind of philosopher was Seneca?
2. About what, does Seneca say we are frugal and unwilling to do?
3. What did Seneca say Augustus took pleasure in?
4. What does Seneca say about the man who “has lived long because he has gray hair and wrinkles”?
Discussion Questions:
1. Do you think it’s possible to be ‘preoccupied’ as Seneca says, but also living life to your own fullest?
2. Seneca said it is respectable to be greedy with our time. How true does this hold for you?
3. What do you consider a waste of your time? Do you have a choice? Is it possible to make that time you waste productive to you somehow?
It’s hard to disagree with this view. Many of us have been there when a professor tells us that in a week from now, we’ll have our first exam. One day goes by, you still haven’t prepared. Then two, three, four, and so on, until the day before the exam. You spend that whole day up until the night watching one episode of Stranger Things on Netflix, promising yourself just one … and then two, then three, and it felt like almost no time had passed. Your three hours of enjoyment felt short and unfulfilling. Eventually, you hunker down and study all through the night. You realize there’s so much content to study, there’s no way you’re going to be able to get through all of it in one night. Time flew. You wasted so much time, you didn’t pay attention to how much of it had gone to waste. If you had spent at least one hour everyday studying for that exam, then that one week you had to prepare for that exam would have felt fulfilling- that it was ample time to study and that you had made the most of it.
This is what Seneca is telling us, but in the broader perspective of life. He goes on to say that people are frugal and quick to guard their property, that they are unwilling to spend their money, “but to how many people each of us shares out his life!” When it comes to wasting time, they are the most wasteful of the one thing in which it is respectable to be greedy.
You could waste an hour listening to a pessimistic person telling you how stupid something is, or you could spend that time with someone who you love, who will provide you with happiness and make you feel great the whole day, thus empowering you to make even better usefulness of your time.
To save this post from getting too long, I’d like to bullet some points Seneca made in his writing. I didn’t make it through the whole text, but I will highlight what I’ve read so far.
- “You'll hear many say: "After my fiftieth year I'll retire to a life of leisure; my sixtieth year will bring release from all my duties." And what guarantee, may I ask, do you have that your life will last longer? Who will allow those arrangements of yours to proceed according to plan? Are you not ashamed to keep for yourself only the remnants of your existence, and to allocate to philosophical thought only that portion of time which can't be applied to any business? How late it is to begin living just when life must come to an end! What foolish obliviousness to our mortality to put off wise plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to want to begin life from a point that few have reached!”
- “The divine Augustus, to whom the gods gave more than to any man, never ceased to pray for rest for himself and to seek release from the affairs of state. Every conversation of his kept coming back to this theme, that he was hoping for leisure; he would relieve his toils with this sweet, even if illusory, consolation, the thought that one day he would live for himself.”
Augustus sent a letter to the senate describing that leisure was something he desired so much, but because he couldn’t enjoy it in reality, he took pleasure in the thought of it. For men who are preoccupied, living is their least important activity.
- “But the person who devotes every second of his time to his own needs and who organizes each day as if it were a complete life neither longs for nor is afraid of the next day. For what new kind of pleasure is there that any hour can now bring?”
- “So there's no reason to believe that someone has lived long because he has gray hair and wrinkles: he's not lived long but long existed.”
- “Life is divided into three parts: past, present, and future. Of these, the present is brief, the future doubtful, the past certain.”
For a text written in 49 AD, Seneca’s wisdom couldn’t be even more relevant today with the even greater things that we have to eat up our time.
Quiz:
1. What kind of philosopher was Seneca?
2. About what, does Seneca say we are frugal and unwilling to do?
3. What did Seneca say Augustus took pleasure in?
4. What does Seneca say about the man who “has lived long because he has gray hair and wrinkles”?
Discussion Questions:
1. Do you think it’s possible to be ‘preoccupied’ as Seneca says, but also living life to your own fullest?
2. Seneca said it is respectable to be greedy with our time. How true does this hold for you?
3. What do you consider a waste of your time? Do you have a choice? Is it possible to make that time you waste productive to you somehow?
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