I recently stumbled upon the reading “On The Shortness of Life,” a famous letter by Lucius Seneca. A good overview of the reading can be found here. Here are a few pull quotes from the letter that happen to relate with some of my thoughts this past week.
Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come… The engrossed, therefore, are concerned with present time alone, and it is so brief that it cannot be grasped, and even this is filched away from them, distracted as they are among many things.
~ Seneca
It’s amazing how easily we get distracted by day-to-day concerns, and how fast we allow menial activities to preoccupy us to take our minds off other things.
Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present… All postponement of something they hope for seems long to them. Yet the time which they enjoy is short and swift, and it is made much shorter by their own fault; for they flee from one pleasure to another and cannot remain fixed in one desire.
~ Seneca
Oh how we put some future plans or events on such a pedestal, always wishing for it to come sooner, expecting such great things, only to watch as it passes by like any other day.
They spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes today.
~ Seneca
“If you have a minute in a day, you still have enough time.” ~ Mock Orange
2 thoughts on “The Shortness of Life”