On the Shortness of Life Summary (7/10)

Life is short. This is something that everyone knows, but it bears repeating, because we very often forget it. We forget that life is short, and then we end up living it badly.

On the Shortness of Life was written by Seneca to his friend Paulinus. In the book, Seneca tries to convince Paulinus that life is too short to waste time on things that do not matter. Seneca argues that the only way to make the most of life is to focus on what is most important.

Seneca’s work on the shortness of life is a collection of his thoughts on how to make the most of life. The book tries to teach its readers how to live a good life by providing examples of people who have done so. Seneca’s work is significant because it is one of the earliest works that focus on the subject of living a good life.

In order to make the most of life, Seneca argues that we need to focus on the things that are most important. He provides examples of people who have done well in life, and he tells his friend Paulinus how to do the same.

Wasted Time

But we are possessed by useless tasks, an avarice that insatiable, drink, sloth, an ambition to please others, or money.

“The part of life we really live is small.”

Think of how little time you really have. After you factor in the arguments, the social duties, the self-inflicted diseases, idle and unused time – you realize how little time was really your own.

There are many ways to waste time. Some seek nothing but wine and lost, others by the empty dream of glory, others by wrath, hatred, or even the pleasures of the belly. And then you add the maintenance tasks you perform on a daily basis, and you will that, you have allowed yourself little time to breathe.

Yet no pursuit can be successful by a man who is preoccupied with many things.

“since the mind, when its interests are divided, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it.”

Learning How to Live

The busy man is busied with living, there is nothing harder to learn. It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and the whole of it to learn how to die. Many great men have renounced money and pleasure and made it their sole aim to know how to live.

But it takes a great man to rise above a human weakness to not allow his time to be stolen from him. The life of such a man is very long because he has devoted whatever time he has to himself. He did not let others control it, and he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time.

The most precious thing in the world is time, and men are blind to it, because it is not a physical thing. Those who live for tomorrow waste their present – expectancy is the greatest hindrance to living.

Leisure vs Idle Preoccupation

We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics. Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters?

There is a difference between leisure and idle preoccupation. People spend too much time focusing on how well their hair looks, than building their character. It is not just chess or sunbathing or playing with a ball that wastes time, but so are intellectual pursuits into narrow, insignificant areas of knowledge.

The only men who can consider themselves at leisure are philosophers.

They can annex every age to their own. They know how to benefit from history.

If time has passed by the philosopher, he embraces it by recollection. And if time is present, he uses it. If it is still to come, he anticipates it.

But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing.

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