On the Shortness of Life (Seneca)
On the Shortness of Life is one of Seneca’s most beloved essays. The call to action from one of history’s greatest Stoic philosophers is to stop wasting so much time on that which does not matter (which is to say: to stop wasting so much time, period). The essay is far too brief to warrant a summary (you should just read it), but here are my favourite, thought-provoking quotes.
“It is not that we have such a short space of time, but that we waste much of it . . . our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.”
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals.”
“There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn . . . It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and – what will perhaps make you wonder more – it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.”
“And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long – he has existed long. For what if you should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.”
“Yet no one will bring back the years, no one will bestow you once more to yourself. Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of a populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay.”