Life Is Not Short, You Keep It Short
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dive into the pool of stoic wisdom and how you can use its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s selection comes from the Roman philosopher Seneca’s On The Brevity of Life , a 2,000-year-old treatise on how we spend our time that still rings true:
The point is not that we have little to live, but that we spend a lot of it. Life is long enough, and we have been given a generous enough sum for the highest achievements, if all this was well invested. But when it is wasted in reckless luxury and not spent on anything useful, the last limitation of death makes us finally realize that it has passed before we know that it is leaving. So it is: we are not given a short life, we make it short, and we do not get it badly, but waste it … Life is long if you know how to use it. – Seneca, On the brevity of life
What does it mean
This quote is pretty straightforward and straightforward. Seneca believes that we have enough time in life to achieve our goals, but instead we spend it on things that don’t matter ( Marcus Aurelius would call these “external things” or distractions ). By the time we are on our deathbed, only then do we realize how much time we have wasted. Only then do we see that life is not short, but we decided to give it that feeling.
What to take from there
We all want a fulfilling life. We want to do everything, see everything and leave our mark on the world. But for this, as Seneca says, you must avoid “thoughtless luxury” and “idleness”, whatever they may be in your circumstances. In Seneca’s eyes, your life will become longer and more fulfilling if you are focused, alert and disciplined.
This approach does not mean that you should completely avoid funny things. You would probably burn out and go crazy if you weren’t doing anything other than productive work. No, you need to change the way you look at the time remaining here. You need to view time as a limited resource that you are wasting and that you cannot earn more. Be careful and selective when choosing your activities. You should never “waste” time, but “use” it. Sometimes you will use your time for pleasure, and sometimes you will use your time for work, but never waste it. Spend your time here wisely, and life will be exactly as long as you need.
You can read Seneca’s book ” On the Shortness of Life” for free here .