7 Lessons from “On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca, the Stoic Scholar
Seneca the Younger (b.4BC) was a Roman philosopher. He was introduced to the Stoic school of philosophy from an early age and went on to write numerous books and essays on Stoicism, many of which endure in western culture. On the shortness of life, an Essay expounding that any length of life is sufficient if lived wisely.
This essay is profound, and one I regularly revisit. It serves as a reminder to lead an authentic life, filled with meaning, and not at the whims of others. I felt compelled to share the key lessons I took from it below, although I recommend listening to the entire audiobook, which is available on the Vox Stoica YouTube Channel below.
#1. You can exist for a long time but live a very short life. Life is long if you know how to use it.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
How true this is! Within the essay, Seneca goes on to mention the various forms that a misdirected life can take, whether through spending your days excitedly waiting for a fleeting sporting event to happen, jumping from one passion to the next, or running around to fulfill social engagements at the whims of others. For me, this is a stark reminder we should regularly replay (perhaps at the start of the weekend), and the importance of a considered perspective on the direction you want your life to take. Carpe Diem, but Carpe Diem as a considered philosophy.
#2. There is no commodity greater than time
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
Money is a concept in the same way that time is, yet many of us fail to recognize this and fail to see time slipping away. Time and time again, I hear about ‘not sweating the small stuff, or living at the whims of others. Seneca goes on to question if one could see the number of years laid out before them, would they treat it with such disdain? Would you find a visual reminder like an hourglass a useful tool, or something to regard with fear?
#3. On squandering time
“You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply — though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire… How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!”
The point here is that you can’t see the sands of time frittering away. The Peter Pan syndrome is as true today as it ever has been. One day you look up in the mirror and you are (insert) age, but haven’t fulfilled half of what you wanted to in life. This inspires me to reflect on the time I have wasted, and press forward with more meaningful pursuits, namely pursuing my writing career.
#4. Learning how to live takes an entire lifetime
“No activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied … since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it. Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn…Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.”
This links to the concept of the ‘examined life, but is also a caution against running around like a headless chicken to social engagements, working your socks off, and running after clients. I have realized there is a balance in life, and the idea of a life in servitude of others is not a life at all. Seneca discusses an alternative for ‘business’ and steers us towards a life filled with simplicity and free of external distractions. When I think about my perfect evening, after a hard day at the office, running around town, or spending hours on social media does not feature in it.
#5. Putting things off is a waste of life
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
How many times have you thought to yourself — “I will be happy when I…(insert x life goal; get married; have kids; change jobs; buy that land; retire) To much hope is to deny the fundamental human truth that suffering is a core part of life.
#6. On being tossed about
“Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day… Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied with food which he does not want but can hold. So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.”
It makes me sick to think about the times at work when I’ve said — I can’t wait for this week, quarter or year to be over. How much is that ingrained into the collective conscience? It’s Friday, so, therefore, you should feel happy, Monday you should feel drained. How about we just embrace every day as it comes, and feel the way feel, making the most of every day?
#7. On those who toil
“It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it.”
Seneca was a landed aristocrat, who likely never NEEDED to work to earn a crust. My take on this, he is not disputing the act of working but encouraging us to seek a more simple life, to limit our wants and needs in favor of a more fulfilling life. In its simplest form, avoid the lack of control over your own sleep patterns, work that eats into your family and free time.
I appreciate that this post doesn’t do the entire essay justice and there is so much more thinking packed into it, again — I’d encourage you to go out and read the entire essay or listen to the audiobook. Don’t put it off! Carpe Diem.
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