On the Shortness of Life - As Told by a Millenial

This is a retelling of a letter written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived from 4 BC - 65 AD. This is me taking his ideas and writing them in modern context.

Most people complain about the cruelty of life, how short it is, and how unfair it is that right about the time we start to understand it, we’re too old to take advantage of it. It’s not just the ignorant masses that complain about this, even the greatest people feel this way. Hence the famous line, “Life is short, art long.” Aristotle complained that nature gave animals so much time, enough for multiple human lifespans. Yet humans were given a much shorter limit, despite being the ones born to do the great things.

It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste most of it. Life is long, long enough to accomplish the greatest things, if you use it well. When life is wasted living carelessly, not being spent on worthy causes, death finally comes knocking and we realize life has passed us by without us noticing. So the life we have isn’t short, but we make it short; we aren’t being cheated, we’re being wasteful. Just like when you give a million dollars to someone who will just blow it, or you give a few thousand dollars to someone who invests wisely, our lives can be blown or invested wisely just as well.

So why do we complain about the cruelty of time? It is very generous. Life, if used properly, is long. However some people are gripped with materialism, or are obsessed with pointless activities. Some people are drunks, and some are lazy. Some are constantly trying to impress, getting their self worth from other people’s opinions. Others are so obsessed with money, they spend every second looking to make a profit. Many don’t have a consistent goal in life, and are always wandering from one thing to the next, never settled and always dissatisfied. Some have no goal at all, and death comes for them by surprise as they scroll through their news feed. It can’t be denied “Scant is the part of life in which we live.” All the rest of existence, is not living, but just time.

Distractions come at us from all angles, and they keep you from seeing the truth, forcing you to focus merely on desire. If these distractions get a hold of you, it’s almost impossible to get back to who you truly are. You will always be restless, the call of those desires will always be there. I’m not just talking about negative distractions either. Look at the great people, that crowds come to see: they are drowned by their successes. How many people become famous and regret it? How many people are drained by constantly having to live up to their public image? How many have no freedom anymore, because they are swarmed by people the second they step out in public?

What’s crazy is no one would just let someone steal their stuff, if someone tries taking something that is yours, you’re going to fight about it. At the same time though, people let other people steal their time, their life, without saying a word. You’ll find most people won’t just give their money away, but how many people will just give you their time? People are cheap and stingy with their things, but when it comes to wasting time, they’ll throw away the one thing they should be greedy about.

So grab an old person, say to them, “I see you’re about out of here, you’ve got a couple years left, lets look at how you’ve spent your life. Calculate how much time you spent worrying about money, how much did you spend chasing after sex, how much did you spend arguing with loved ones, how much running around town socializing with people who weren’t important? Add in the time you spent being self destructive, also the time you wasted doing nothing. Now tell me, how many years did you actually live? Look back at how often you were sure of yourself; how few days turned out as you planned; when your mind was free of distraction; what accomplishments do you claim in such a long life; how many stole your time without you realizing; how much did you lose to unnecessary whining, foolish pleasure, greedy desires, pointless social gatherings; how little is left of the time you lived, when you subtract all those things? You’ll come to realize, you’re going to die long before your time.”

So why do we do this? Most people live as if they have unlimited time, their own mortality never enters into their minds, and they don’t pay attention to the time passing them by. We waste time as if we have all the time in the world, when today might actually be the very last you have. A lot of people will say, “I’ll relax and retire when I’m 65, I won’t have to worry about anything then.” So who told you you’re going to live to 65? Who told you that your life is going to go exactly according to plan? How awful it is that you only keep the remnants of your life for yourself? How terrible it is to begin living, just as life is about to come to an end! How incredibly foolish it is to put off enjoying our lives and want to start living from a point that not everyone even makes it to.

Just don’t be afraid to take some time for yourself. I’m not saying go be lazy and drown all your energy in sleep or waste it doing common things. You won’t find satisfaction that way. You will find, deep in your own mind, the things that are most important to you, and you must put your energy into those things. That is how you make the most of your life. That is how you can look back in your golden years and know that your time wasn’t wasted.

I’d just like to point out again, this was extremely paraphrased. the full letter is 20 pages long, and goes into extreme depths about the things we waste our time doing. If you’d like to give the actual text a read, you can find it here.