On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
Seneca's On the Shortness of Life gets referenced constantly.
It's been on my reading list for a while now, and I recently got around to it, which means I've finally read all of the "Big Three" figures of Stoicism: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca.
Seneca wrote the essay around 49 AD to his father-in-law, Paulinus. In it Seneca speaks about the importance of living one's life intentionally. He urges us to avoid falling into a common pitfall of assuming that life is too short, when in reality we simply waste so much of it:
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. But when life is squandered through soft and careless living, and when it’s spent on no worthwhile pursuit, death finally presses and we realize that the life which we didn’t notice passing has passed away.
I've read about many of the key themes and passages in this letter elsewhere, because it's referenced so frequently by other Stoic writers and by later writers who are building upon Seneca's ideas—but it was still nice to read the source material for myself.
This is just one of the essays in the Hardship and Happiness collection that I bought, so I'll have to slowly work through the rest to get a better feel for Seneca's writing.
At this point I think I prefer both Marcus and Epictetus, but the it's hard to overemphasize the importance of the idea that Seneca is preaching here.
Overall: 50
I use the 20-80 scale to rate things. For nonfiction books I just use one overall rating, while for fiction books I have four different sub-categories.
Highlights
- Most of mankind, Paulinus, complains about nature’s meanness, because our allotted span of life is so short, and because this stretch of time that is given to us runs its course so quickly, so rapidly—so much so that, with very few exceptions, life leaves the rest of us in the lurch just when we’re getting ready to live.
- Men are thrifty in guarding their private property, but as soon as it comes to wasting time, they are most extravagant with the one commodity for which it’s respectable to be greedy.
- Your sort live as if you’re going to live forever, your own human frailty never enters your head, you don’t keep an eye on how much time has passed already. You waste time as if it comes from a source full to overflowing, when all the while that very day which is given over to someone or something may be your last.
- The greatest impediment to living is expectancy, which relies on tomorrow and wastes today. You map out what is in fortune’s hand but let slip what’s in your own hand. What are you aiming at? What’s your goal? All that’s to come lies in uncertainty: live right now.
- You manage the revenues of the world, it is true, as scrupulously as you would a stranger’s, as diligently as you would your own, as conscientiously as you would the state’s. You win affection in a post in which it is hard to avoid being hated. Yet it is nevertheless better—believe me—to know the balance sheet of one’s own life than that of the public grain supply.