SENECA ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE

PHILOSOPHY

It’s a problem that, frankly, terrifies us: our own mortality. Youth is fleeting; we’re middle-aged before we know it; old age is looming. The modern response is to try to prolong life: if we get everything right we might add a decade or two. But close up we’re still in a panic: the weeks and months still slip away.  Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Younger (since his father also gained fame as a writer) takes a radically different approach: it’s not how long we live that matters but what we do now, with the time we happen to have.  He’s a deeply poignant guide because his own adult life was incredibly insecure. Born into a prominent family in Spain in 4BC, he built a highly successful career as a playwright, a financier and a politician. His success led him into the orbit of the ruthless Imperial Family: he became tutor and then adviser to the horrifically unstable Nero. He knew that at any point his life could be cut short by a rumour spread by a rival or by the vindictive whim of his employers.  Seneca’s beautiful, powerful idea is that time is subjective. In ten minutes we could jot down the best idea we’ve ever had; in an hour we could have the most wonderful conversation of our lives. Or, we could fret away a weekend in sullen resentment. A day could be a huge intellectual, moral and imaginative adventure; or it could be a blur of busy preoccupation with things, and people, that ultimately we don’t care about.  

A life cannot be measured by how many days it contains, but only by what went on in our minds during those days.  Deep down, Seneca is proposing that we waste our lives because we’re afraid of what others would think if we were to concentrate on what is really important to us: we’d make less money; quite a few acquaintances would deem us fools; we’d probably never achieve any public acclaim (for that requires massive attention to what happens to please strangers). A life feels short because it is governed by timidity.  The irony is that we’re actually tougher than we imagine. He himself had a small room set aside in his grand home, furnished with straw to sleep on and provisioned only with bread and water, where he would often spend the night, teaching himself that he could manage with little, if he had to, and — therefore — not to fear what others would call disgrace or failure.  Touchingly, his essay on the topic is itself extremely short: a handful of pages. It’s the same idea: if we can work out what we want to say, why should making a book longer be our objective; if we can work out what we love and esteem, why should the number of years we live be the way we judge our existence?  We become obsessed with quantity (how many words, how many years) when we are too frightened to focus on quality (how good, how important). Quality over quantity is the solution to our dread. 

Article From THE SCHOOL OF LIFE